Happy Birthday......to me.

People always ask me if I hate having my birthday so close to Christmas....and to tell you the truth it doesn't really bother me. In fact, in some ways it is kind of nice. The best part about it is that since it is so close to Christmas that a lot of the time my family is also all together for my bday. There is only one thing that still bothers me.....Since everyone just spent all their time shopping for Christmas...my birthday is always last minute shopping and everyone always go shopping on my birthday and I have to stay home by myself all day. In fact, I don't remember a year when they didn't have to go shopping on my birthday for my birthday.. :) But all in all...my birthday being so close to Christmas isn't all that bad of a thing....

So - this birthday...after everyone finished their shopping, we all went bowling....

Grandpa was in charge of helping Emily and Noah!

Dave being Dave...

Just look at that technique... :) ha ha..

Me, Mom, Dad, Steve

And do I even have to tell you who won??? :) Yep - that's right! me! I forget my exact score...100 something....125 maybe? 130? not sure...All i know is that I won! And it was a lot of fun! :)

Then we all went out to dinner at some Texas restaurant.....It was pretty good.

And I actually managed to get Austin to sit on my lap and not cry the entire time... :) A task that didn't come as easily to me as it did to Dave! Austin just loved Uncle Dave...I'm still wondering why he didn't love me just as much... :)

After dinner we went home for some really good birthday cake and mom broke out some birthday hats. Well - I tell myself they were birthday hats, but they said "happy new year" on them! :)

Anyway - it was a great birthday thanks to my family! It definitely beat last year....when half of us ended up getting sick that day! :)