Birthday Blisters, Chiweenies, and so on… our life.

As much as we want to let everyone in our personal lives a little, that doesn’t really happen very often during our busy season… mostly because we don’t really have personal lives during our busy season! Ha!  But low and behold, we actually do take time off on major holidays and special occasions, if you don’t count our momentary lapses when we sneak a peek at our email and such.  That said, Scottie and I both recently celebrated our birthdays and we actually did some fun things to celebrate!  Scottie (celebrating his 33rd birthday) had a bonfire… or rather a small fire in a fire pit in my parents backyard, along with the type of party that has a “bonfire feel” to it.  In other words it was an awesome, chill party with all our close family and friends sitting around a campfire telling stories and laughing.  Awesome.   I got to make a special Scottie-esque playlist for it (which means lots of Incubus, Gary Jules, Led Zepplin, and Muse), so it felt like my birthday too.

Unfortunately one weakness that we’re trying to improve on is that we have a tendency to neglect taking pictures of our life.  Ridiculous right?  We spend so much time hiding behind the camera that we have a hard time pulling one out when we’re trying to participate in life and enjoy ourselves.  We’re trying to get past the idea that our pictures from these fun times in our lives have to be good enough that someone would actually pay for them.  They don’t have to be good, they just have to be US and we’re so used to pushing ourselves and viewing photography as an art to create and perfect, that it’s really hard for us to just take a deep breath and chill out!  We’re getting used to the idea of just having an easy to use camera handy (even if it’s just an iphone and not an expensive contraption with multiple lenses and settings) and pulling it out for a 2 second shot (not one that takes 2 min. to figure out) whenever we want to capture a moment in our life whether or not the lighting is perfect or the background is beautiful.  We just need to do it and love the memories we get!  And honestly, it’s this lack of photos that keeps us from blogging about our lives much as well, we don’t have pictures of our life to include in these blogs!!

So here is my 1 picture from the party that I took with my little point and shoot camera.

That’s the birthday boy and that’s our dog Jasmine trying to stay warm and showing off her bat ears at the same time.  She definitely has some chihuahua in her and we suspect a little weenie dog to be hiding out in her as well.  Or at least we hope there’s weener dog in her because then we can call her a chiweenie or my personal favorite a weenie-wa-wa (take a moment to say it out loud because it’s really funny)!  This is the same dog who is at this moment insisting on laying on top of my arm while I try to type.  The computer is her arch nemesis because we spend so much time on it she thinks we love it more than her. Since I’ve spent so much time talking about her, here’s an iphone pic of me with her (and somehow our messy house snuck itself into the back ground on this one… sneaky house mess).

By the way some of our favorite nicknames for little Jasmine is Snoop Doggy Dog, Jazzercise, Jazmanian Devil, and DJ Jazzy Jeff… Scottie’s the brains behind that cleverness.

After realizing that we only have 1 photo of Scottie’s once in a lifetime shot of turning 33, we made it a priority to take a camera along on my birthday and to actually use it!  We got some great shots that I LOVE!

(Aww, Breanna and Scottie!)

While they may not all make it into a photography magazine or win any awards for their artistic perfection, they capture the night perfectly and that’s all I wanted!

(This is me by the way, Breanna.)

(Now every time you see the word “me” on this blog, you know who I’m talking about!)

So here was the scene for the night.  We called up 4 different couples to come along for the night and help me “celebrate” turning 27 (sorry if you didn’t get invited, we had to keep it small if this plan was going to work).

We all got dressed up cocktail style attire and hopped on the light rail.  We rode it around downtown Phoenix, making different stops along the way for different courses of our meal.

I wasn’t sure if it was going to work out right, but it went PERFECTLY!  And it was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had, rivaled only by my hot pink and black themed, “Ugly sweater and sangria birthday party” a couple of years ago.  Oh yeah, my costume slumber parties when I was little were pretty rocking too.  So this one was in the top 3 at least!

We started out the night at a swanky little place called the District to hit them up just in time for Happy Hour.  While the atmosphere was perfect, the service, not so much.  It definitely seemed like one of those nights where a couple of people didn’t show up for work and everyone else was very pissed about it!  It didn’t matter though because we were having a great time with great friends in a place that was way too cool for us and we liked the place enough that we’ll give it a second chance one day.

(This isn’t actually at the District, but you should click the link to see how cool it is there!  It was really dim inside the first two places and we totally would’ve disturbed people around us if we’d taken pictures, so we didn’t).

After that, we were still pretty starving since it took so long to get the first round we ordered that we gave up on getting anything else there, so we hopped on the rail to head North towards our dinner destination, Switch. The people who own Switch also own a few other trendy little places around town including Fez and I think Deluxe Burger as well.

( I love how happy Scottie is in this picture!)

They’re all awesome places, and all places that support different non-profit organizations each month (they give you brochures for the organizations with your check)  sounds a lot like Radiant Love to me… it was a perfect place to go!  The food at Switch was amazing!  I looked down the table and I was envious of everyone sitting there because I wished I had the same food on my plate that every person around me had, it all looked so good!  Only, FYI don’t try the drunken italian sodas, my friend Liz had the pomegranate one and I had strawberry, and just “eww”.  Everything else was how I imagine food to be in my dreams! 🙂

The walk back to the light rail was a fun one from there, mostly because we were still a ways away from the station when we saw the train headed our way.  In a split second decision someone yelled “RUN!!!!” so we booked it in a single file line despite our fancy dresses, matching stilettos, and uneven brick cobbled sidewalk!

(I SOOO wish I had a picture of the running! In my mind it’s  pretty hilarious picture!)

I’m sure the boys weren’t used to running in dress shoes either, but we all made it safely without even so much as a sprained ankle or a coat stuck in the light rail door!  Of course that adrenaline rush quickly turned us into that loud obnoxious group that flaunts how much fun they’re having when all you want to do is have a nice relaxing ride home after a late shift at work (you know the group I’m talking about!).  Yep, that was us, sorry if any of you were on that train, but we were having as much fun as it looked like!

We finished off our night at The Rose and Crown.  It’s one of my favorite pubs that I always forget to go to.

It’s in an old historic house in Heritage Square downtown.  One of my friends came out from a bathroom trip inside and said “it looks just like a college house party in there!” Because it really is an old house and everyone looks totally comfortable just hanging out and having a good time!  (This is our pathetic attempt at a funny pose).

We sat out on the lawn, late into the night while sipping our drinks, eating our little cheesecake bites that looked like they were straight out of Alice and Wonderland, and laughing until our sides were literally aching.

(I don’t think you can literally “die laughing” because if that was possible, we would’ve keeled over right there!)

It was so perfect, sitting under the stars, listening to all my current favorite songs (The Cure “Just Like Heaven” is my very favorite song in the world right now for some reason) that were drifting out of the bar, while having fantastic conversations with my friends who are as  intelligent as they are hilarious.

(Laughing until I was crying right there!)

It was just one of those nights that I know I’ll think about the next time I have a bad day and wish I was there again.  It couldn’t have been better (I’d say “perfect” but I’ve already way overused that word already).

Thank you to all my friends who braved the dressy clothes, got infected blisters (like I did) from their fancy shoes, pulled muscles laughing (like I did), and trusted me enough to plan such a crazy adventure for them!  Oh and thanks for the cards, the peeps, and the promise of Anthropologie joy!  You guys are all great and you meshed together to make the… dare I say it… “PERFECT” group on the PERFECT night!!  Love you all!