Happy Birthday to Me!

 

  What a birthday I had this year. The girls threw me a tea party (that's another post) and Mendis took me shopping and out to dinner. And on my birthday everyone kept coming by work and giving me presents...awesome. So I picked out what I wanted for my birthday and it was going to require some shopping. I wanted something totally frivolous and crazy fun. Something I probably wouldn't even get myself. So I got a Royal Dalton Tea Set. Crazy huh. I shopped online for weeks to pick it out and get the best deal because it is crazy expensive for a china tea set.

Beautiful right!! Polka Blue Pattern...love it to pieces.

After the afternoon of shopping and tracking this baby down we went to dinner. We went to Emeril Lagasse's restaurant The Delmonico Steakhouse in the Winn. Way fun. It's one of those places we always wanted to try and it was worth the wait.

This was the dining room we ate in. The place was huge and this was one of about 4 rooms. So let me take you through our dinner with us...

Incredible fun appetizer of apple slice with honey mouse with praline sprinkles

Popovers for our bread. They were so good I asked for more.

My Wilted Spinach & Frisee Salad with praline encrusted bacon. Divine!

Almost done. That fried poached egg was fab.

Mendis' New Orlean's Gumbo

My ribeye

Mushrooms & Creamed Corn Gratinee

Mendis had Bananas Foster Brownie

I had Emeril's Banana Cream Pie. It was like a heavenly cheesecake.

Here we are posing with him after dinner lol.

It was an incredible meal but definitely just for special occasions. After dinner we got to see all the weirdos decked out for the electric daisy carnival. Lots of traffic for that clear out to the speedway. Every year we get to fight through that hoard of crazies.

Father's Day Weekend

Jeff and Rachel came down for the weekend in June So we almost had everyone of our kids here. Almost because Christina was headed to Boston with her school tour so unfortunately we missed her and Benjy had to work too so he missed the fun. Friday night we all went to Los Lupe's in Mesquite for dinner and then we headed over to go bowling.

But the fun wasn't over. Since this was Jeff & Rachel's last time in town for awhile we splurged and took them to our favorite haunt. Yup we hit the Winn buffet.

My favorite!

Not sure what this says about us?

Then to totally kill the calorie count for the weekend. We all went to the Green Valley Ranch buffet for breakfast on Monday morning. This time Benjy could come! Happy Father's Day to them both. Kinda sick of food after that.

FHE Closing Social

We had a blast at our closing social for our FHE group this year. It gets bigger and better every year it seems. Jensen's and us rented a 4 seat atv and Keels took their Ranger and the six of us went up to the top of Bunkerville Mountain.

Getting that baby loaded up was a chore and a half. We thought we might not make it.

The narrows

Almost there

Picnic time

Gunsight

What a blast we had. We'd love to do it all over again.

Memorial Day

There is a long standing tradition of doing graves every Memorial Day weekend usually on that Saturday. Everyone gets up and cleans graves while the old folks tell stories. Then there is usually a treat or breakfast or something at McDonalds. This year I went because we grabbed Rees to go.This year Mendis was the old folk with the stories to pass on...

 

 

 

 

We started having a family dinner once a month with Ashley's family on the last day of every month. We rotate between our houses between the two of us. It's a great way to make sure we stay in touch and hang out together. We thought maybe Hayden could even make it when he could too. May was my first dinner and we decided to invite any Cooper's that could come on Memorial Day. It was nice enough we could even eat on the patio. Hayden was able to come and he brought his new girlfriend Megan for the first time. She is a brave girl to meet the whole bunch of us at once. It was so fun. We just had hot dogs and hamburgers and the traditional Memorial Day food. We all hung out on the patio and watched the boys run around and play and talked past dark. I like this new tradition.