This is 26

You guys.  I meant to publish this post on Friday, but I was DA-RAGGING that day.  And a 26″ pizza, Third Eye Blind and extra large beers were to blame.

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But it also meant my birthday was extra good.  Like got totally spoiled with presents, flowers, homemade cupcakes and “Happy Birthday!” messages good.  My mom had a porch swing delivered earlier last week (!!!!!!!!) and Joey got me concert tickets, gardening goodies, a new Garmin and an iPhone charger so that I don’t have to carry mine back and forth between work and home and because oh my god he might actually be getting good at that paying attention to the details thing!

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And just when I was feeling perfectly spoiled, Becca went and baked me cupcakes, then made the cutest display ever and Bobby somehow managed to drive it to work with him.  I for real ate a cupcake for lunch then told Becca to quit her day job.  Plus tulips from Joey because he enjoys setting the bar high for himself and future birthdays.  Or because he’s perfect and I love him.

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I took a half day and treated myself to a mani/pedi at this new nail salon near our house.  After days of rain and mild temperatures, the sun decided to come out and I walked myself to my appointment and felt like everything was right in the world.  Oh and not only was the nail salon so super nice inside but my mani turned out awesomely!

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Evening plans included dinner at Fat Sully’s and an Augustana/Dashboard Confessional/Third Eye Blind concert.  Yes, we have time traveled back to high school, to a time when Chris Carrabba just gets us and we can sing together about our feelings.  But first, a giant pizza.  The four of us were ONE PIECE (guess whose piece that was…) away from finishing that whole thing, if you can even believe it.  If you’re turning 26 you MUST get the 26″ pizza, right??

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It’s just too funny.  And seriously, that pizza was not just for show.  It also tasted dang good!

Augustana opened the show and I had to make a quick exit from the car to run to the Fillmore so I didn’t miss them.  They only did a four song set and everyone in the crowd was talking and didn’t realize they were in the presence of greatness, aka Dan Layus’s perfect voice, but whatever.  Then he proceeded to take down his own set because he’s a down-to-Earth angel.  In all seriousness though, it’s not often that you get to hear an opening act with a voice like that.

Joey is hands down (see what I did there?) the biggest Dashboard Confessional fan I know.  It’s borderline horrifying.  But also kinda cute.  I stood between Joey and Adam while they sang along to every world of every song and was very entertained.  Also, true love is when you have to stand in the long women’s bathroom line and your husband stands in it with you so that you don’t have to listen to “Vindicated” by yourself.

Apparently Third Eye Blind has a secret fan base because people were rocking out.  I was more like “Play Jumper already!” all night but I’m glad those closet TEB fans could get their fix.  And they did eventually play “Jumper” and it was pretty awesome.  So if Thursday was any indication, 26 is gonna be a good one!

4th of July Weekend Things

So here’s the thing.  I am ALL FOR a three-day holiday weekend and seeing as it’s days before my birthday, I should be all about the 4th of July but year after year, I just find it kind of disappointing (and why does it always seem to be rainy??).  Plus how can you possibly beat last year’s festivities?  This is all to say that this year I set my expectations much lower and it ended up being a perfect, albeit low key, holiday weekend.  I didn’t want it to end!

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We kicked things off on Thursday night, by grabbing beer and dinner with my family at a new-to-us brewery in Westminster.  We had time to enjoy our drinks and super sloppy burgers in the sunshine before a rainstorm swept in and started doing fun things like overturning tables on the patio.  We scooted out of there pretty quick!

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Friday’s day off started with a lazy morning run and breakfast on the front porch and ended with us throwing another BBQ!  The first BBQ is a lot of work but the second BBQ is such a breeze.  The house is already clean, the supplies are already stocked and you’ve realized that drinking a pitcher of sangria is a bad idea.  Joey was all excited that he had a festive shirt to wear till I pointed out we were matching again.

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Oh right and the BBQ occasion was July birthdays!  I turn 26 on Thursday and Tyler, the other July birthday-er was in town so I didn’t have to throw a party for just myself.  Clearly, we have both perfected the stand-awkwardly-while-people-sing-“Happy Birthday”-to-you stance.  There was double cobbler and ice cream with CHUNKS OF PEANUT BUTTER AND CHOCOLATE.  I was all “oh that’s a lot of ice cream, I’ll share with Joey” then ate it all.

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4th of July celebratory breakfast!  I felt weird going to Illegal Pete’s when I have pledged lifelong allegiance to Chipotle but I also really wanted a breakfast burrito and a Bloody Mary on the patio sooooo.  The burrito was ♥♥♥ but the Bloody was way meh.  I was also like “this burrito is big, I’ll never finish it” then ate the whole thing.  I guess that was the theme of the weekend.  Anyway, I’d totally go back to Illegal Pete’s for a dinner burrito and probably a margarita.  Full bar, for the win!

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As we finished breakfast, we realized “uhh we have NOTHING to do today.”  Weird!  Once home and lounging in the hammock, we devised a plan to bike to Littleton and go putt putt golfing.  So we sunscreened up, packed our backpack with snacks and water and headed out.  I mean it was hot, we got lost and never made it to putt putt and I saw three cars submerged IN THE Platte River but I had so much fun.  I’m not sure it counts as going on a bike ride together because I was always half a mile behind Joey but whatever.  And just like that, another Summer Bucket List item checked off!

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Evening plans included that grilled vegan pizza — you should’ve seen my face when Joey asked me if it had cheese — and an outdoor movie!!!!  Oh sorry, just a little excited.  I put the idea in Joey’s mind that we should set our guest room TV up outside and watch a movie from the hammock.  Ask and you shall receive!  So while I got our pizza all grilled up, Joey got the TV and DVD player all set up.  We brought out the blankets, pillows and pajamas and watched 500 Days of Summer.  Um could that movie be any more perfect?!  Oh and the neighbor kids were setting off fireworks so I’m pretending we had a private show.  BEST NIGHT EVER!

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Can I be honest?  I am SO BAD at taking Sunday pictures.  Unless I do something out of the ordinary, Sunday is usually comprised of laundry and me watching TV with the lights off, to avoid creating extra heat.  So really, you probably don’t want to see any pictures.  I did take this super sunny picture of the toast I had for breakfast which is totally on different bread that’s too thick to even constitute as toast and it’s a total downgrade for my favorite coffee shop.  Who do I speak to about this??

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Also, I decided restocking myself on granola (because I was getting sick of crumbling frosted wheat cereal over things and pretending it was granola) was worth turning on the oven.  A little sweat mustache in the middle of the day never hurt anyone, right?  Then I ordered myself a magnetic knife holder online, finished my book (it was kind of depressing), watched more TV and decided drinking coffee on a Sunday was a terrible idea.

What did you do this 4th of July weekend?