Happy Birthday :)

Ahhh birthdays.  They happen every year, whether we want them to or not.  I find that you either embrace them or try to ignore them.  I personally embrace them to the fullest. This day (or week if you really want to know) is about me, me, me.  The one day of the year where no one can question your selfishness. All kidding aside, I use this day to just have fun and soak up all of the love from those near and dear to my heart.

As some of you know, I LOVE donuts.  And unfortunately I cannot eat just one, so on my birthday every year I go to my favorite donut shop, Country Donuts and grab a dozen for myself.  This year it included an apple spice donut, some honey glazed, and of course a few jelly filled. Although I cannot actually eat all 12 of them, I pick at them all day long and relish in the fact that they are all mine if I want to eat them all.

This year I pulled all three girls out of school to enjoy a lunch together at the Tracks.  Man, they really do have the BEST burgers around. For dinner, we tried a new place called Region.  Let me pause here for a second to wipe the drool from my mouth as I tell you how good this restaurant is.  I love trying new places and this one did not disappoint. We started out with their bacon wrapped dates for an appetizer, gnocchi with wild boar and short ribs for dinner and topped it all off with their amazing toffee pudding for dessert (oh and of course I had a spicy margarita :)).  OMG – amazing! This is now my new favorite place – cannot wait to go back!

And because I cannot get enough dessert, I had a sweet friend of mine make me a chocolate cake.  Take a look at this! Can it get any cuter? And oh so good!

Take a look at the one she made me a few years ago.  She is so talented!

Although another year has gone by,  I will choose to embrace yet another wrinkle, another achy joint, and of course another gray hair.  But I will also embrace all the sweet birthday wishes, the sweet birthday hugs, the sweet birthday goodies and remember for another year how blessed I am.  Thank you my friends and family for making my day so very special yet again. Xo

~Jen

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JEN, Jen, jEn, jeN, jen, JEN, wow I love me some Jen! My mama llama turned ** (sorry can’t tell you how old she turned, she would kill me with her bare hands) this week! So that means being nice to sisters, eating lots and lots of sweets, doing whatever Mom says, and eating lots more sweets!

Before I explain the sugar overload I had this week I just wanna let y’all know how grateful I am for my mama. She is the most amazing and inspiring woman I have ever met. She gives me so much confidence in myself and supports me like no other. All of my friends always tell me how much they love my mom, and I love being able to call myself her daughter. The other day someone told me when I become a mother myself I’m going to be just like my mom. That made me feel so grateful and excited to be able to have my mom. She has given me her loudness, her sweet tooth, and her need to care for people. Without her, I don’t know what I would do. To the sweetest and most loving person I know, happy happy birthday.

Back to the sweet tooth part, I just wanna say thanks to my mom for spoiling herself on her birthday because in reality, she spoils me too. We have donuts all over the house and in the car, we have a huge cake just sitting in our kitchen, and four cupcakes just waiting to be eaten. So yeah, I’m thriving and obviously Jen is too! Personally, my favorite is the Wicked Good Cupcakes we have.

Four delicious cupcakes in jars, basically it’s double the cupcake and double the frosting so yeah, amazing. Just throwing this out there though, which ones better, mini cupcakes better than regular cupcakes? I can tell you which, mini cupcakes. Here’s why: mini cupcakes have an evenly distributed amount of frosting and cake. And I’m a frosting LOVER, the cake and frosting ratio is prime. Regular cupcakes have more cake than frosting which is fine, but not better than mini cupcakes. So, yeah, I’ve gone off on a rant but it’s because I feel very strongly about this topic. The other foods we have at our house are amazing too, but my favorite is definitely these cupcakes.

I'm just going to leave my rant about mini cupcakes and regular cupcakes as the main point because it’s a serious topic that needs to be considered when deciding which dessert to bring to your son’s friend’s 7th birthday party.

~Elsa