My Birthday...

I had the most wonderful birthday last weekend!! :D I received lots of pressies (which always helps to make it an awesome birthday...) but the BEST part of my birthday was that our dear friends Andrea and Ryan made the journey all the way up from Woombye to spend the day with us :)

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of their visit with us (Im really disappointed by that) but we had the most lovely time together, and they even helped us put up our Christmas tree :) Michael and I had decided to do our tree over two Family Home Evenings - the first one involved me getting up in the ceiling and passing down all our Christmas ornaments and such AND then dragging it all home :), and the second Family Home Evening was going to involve putting up all the decorations, the tree etc. But Im SO glad we did it this way instead!! I personally consider putting up the tree etc, to be a chore, but Husband loves it so we do it each year. This time however, we also had Andrea (who LOVES Christmas just as much as Michael) helping us, whilst Ryan and I just took it easy :) Love it!

Here's some photos of all the lovely pressies I was lucky enough to recieve for my birthday :)

From Abby, James, Maggie and Ana I received a beautiful jewellery set :) I got many compliments about them when we went to dinner that night:



Then I opened up a very cute jewellery box to discover that Tammy had gotten me a BEAUTIFUL pair of butterfly earrings! :) I wore them on Sunday and also got a lot of compliments about them:



Mum and Dad got me a new washing basket (our old one gave up the ghost a few weeks ago), $50 (Thanks Mum and Dad!), and the new Michael Buble Christmas CD, which I've played every day since:



My dear friends Andrea and Ryan gave me an AWESOME cookie jar!!! I've always wanted one! Im so happy:



My Honey got me some Honeycomb:



...and some red frogs:



Oh, I've uploaded the photos in the wrong order! I'll come back to what else Husband got me in just a sec!
Michael's Mum and Dad (and also the J family apparently) gave me a WOK!!! (and utensils!) I LOVE eating (and making) stir frys, but Husband hates them, so we've never been able to justify the cost of buying one. Usually I just whip one up in the ordinary frying pan, but they never taste as good. My plan is to make one in my new wok, using the utensils, tonight:



Oh! Husband also got me a (-nother) pair of TONY BIANCOs!!! :D I am one happy, happy, happy, happy, happy wife!!! :) I was going to wear them on Sunday, but they didnt go with my outfit, so I will wear them this coming Sunday instead:



A new tradition that we've started (well, we actually started it last year...) is that each year, Husband will pick out a quality, pretty Christmas ornament for our tree. Last year he bought me two! But he had a little trouble picking one this year - I still love it though:



...and he bought me some Musk Lollies :D Cos I love them:



And this is our sad, overburdened little tree:



I bought it from Crazy Clarks about 4 years ago, and including all the original decorations and the lights and the tinsel I only paid around $23.00 for the whole thing! Bargain!! We were hoping to get a new tree this year, but we'll see...

All in all, I had a spectacular birthday - I honestly dont remember the last time that I had this much fun! It was especially nice when we had Andrea help me feed the calves - she said it was the high-light of her day! Then she amended that to say that seeing us for my birthday was actually the high-light of her day...but I know what she meant! :) Im so glad they came all that way just to see us! :)