the birthday weekend!!!

As many of you probably know, Christian is about to (in a few hours, officially) celebrate his 24th birthday! He has been working so hard at school and putting in a lot of time, so I thought it would be fun to have a birthday weekend preceding his actual birthday, to celebrate and let him relax a little. We invited a group of friends from Tucson to come and visit us for the weekend and it was a ridiculous amount of fun.

Robert, Marissa, Nick, Danny, and Keith drove up on Friday afternoon. We went out to dinner at z pizza, a fantastic place with two locations near our house. They have some great vegan pizza as well as the regular stuff, so we all were stuffed and happy. We went back to the house, watched some movies, and had what I believe to be the biggest sleepover our house has seen thus far. Robert and Marissa snagged the guest room, while the other boys slept on a luxurious bed of blankets (thanks, Mom, for the sending up the blankets!). SO much fun. I don't think anyone was too crowded and it was tons of fun having that many friends crammed into our house. I felt like I was 12 again.

Christian REALLY wanted to go Salt River tubing and we knew that it was most likely one of the very last weekends of the season, so our friends happily agreed and we had a fantastic time on the river. I wish I had photos, but I wasn't brave enough to venture out with any camera I own. I need a waterproof guy for next time. We had a few minor casualties, including me and Nick getting separated from the group during a particularly nasty rapid and  crawling through the bush to find a horse trail allowing us to catch up further down the river. Also, Danny lost his left shoe. Poor guy, rocking one shoe the rest of the afternoon.

After the river drained us, we went to Green in Tempe and stuffed our faces. The food was delicious (as usual). And then it was time to say goodbye. We had a GREAT time with those guys and hope they come to see us again soon.

After trying desperately to watch the U of A game versus The Citadel that night (I guess it wasn't in the cards for us), we had a late night snack, tried to watch the delayed broadcast on Fox Sports (started at 11 PM, I fell asleep at halftime), then the day caught up with us. Sun, friends, and fantastic food equaled the best night's sleep I've had in a while.

Today, Clinton and Courtney came over and had dinner with us. It was so nice to catch up and spend some time hanging out. Clinton baked Chris some amazing brownie cookies with Reeses Pieces inside. Speaking of baking, shout out to Grammy for those Snicker-doodles (and other treats). Let me tell you, they've been receiving complements all weekend and the birthday boy loves them. :)

All in all, I think Christian had a great weekend and is very happy, which means I had a great weekend and am subsequently very happy! He works hard all the time, not just in school but in life, and is such a fantastic partner to me. It feels nice to be able to make him feel special for the entire weekend. He opened his present from me early and has been playing Metroid: Other M for Wii since about 9 PM. He's also been generally unresponsive to me since about 9 PM. I think he likes it. He got some other cool presents (a gift card and two SWEET coyotes caps) and I'm making him save his present from my folks, Meg/Kyle, and my Grammy until tomorrow (so he has something to open).

Thank you to everyone who made this weekend and fantastic for the both of us. You all better be blowing up his phone tomorrow with mad birthday wishes. You only turn 24 once!

xxoo,
Ash