Without you it's just not the same

I miss my grandma, Mamaw. As my birthday approaches I know that this is going to be the first one for which I won't receive a birthday card from her. She has been such a positive and caring force all of my life and I am missing it for sure as my first big life event without her approaches.

Birthday Dinner

A few days ago was my official, 25 hour long, birthday. That's right, daylight savings time happened on my birthday this year thus increasing the time I got to spend celebrating my birthday. I did sleep through at least 9 hours of my birthday because I was fighting off something awful (unsuccessfully it turns out). But the rest of my 25 hour day I celebrated every minute!

At work they sang me slappy birthday-because I work at Slappy Cakes- and whipped creamed me in the face with delicious homemade whipped cream. However, my real birthday celebration took the place of a delicious meal that I had for dinner. I invited two friends I've made at work, my two couch surfing hosts, and my one fellow new Portlander that I met while at the Hostel and had most of them make something wonderful for my dinner.

Here's how it turned out:

Dana, my couch surfing host: made a delicious salad, two kinds of leafy things, carrots, tomatoes, crazins, feta cheese, and yellow peppers.

Rosie, her roommate: grated the carrots for the salad

Cory, my fellow hosteler: made a delicious steamed yellow squash dish that incorporated lemon juice, butter and Parmesan cheese as well as squash.

Jack, a friend from work: roasted some simple, yet delicious, carrots with the basic ingredients of salt, pepper and olive oil.

Jonathan, another friend from work: made the main course of fettuccine alfredo spicing it up with a bit of nutmeg.

And I made a somewhat sloppy but still sweet and tasty Chocolate Chess Pie for dessert.

All in all, it was a successful meal and as a delightful bonus Dana and Rosie made me the cutest card and brought me delicious french truffles!

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Good things often come in envelopes