We Survived Birthday Week

That's right, folks!  Sarah's Birthday Week is upon us!  I say that simply because over the last five years, she has managed to stretch out the celebration to just over a week.  Seeing as this was one of our last big hurrahs here in Arlington, we decided to go all out, starting with birthday party with tons of food.

 

We had a pretty tasty greek yogurt parfait-type-thing, along with a salad with tons of bacon, and some goat cheese tartlet things.  

Oh yeah, and some "Irish" scones (apparently some special type of butter, not alcohol, makes them Irish), candied bacon, and white chocolate and apricot oatmeal cookies.

Along with a gigantic three-tiered homemade caramel chocolate cake.  It fed twenty people and we still had enough leftover to last us the rest of the week.  Overall, the party went great.

Ellie Goulding was also in town the week of Sarah's birthday, so we went to a concert at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD, as well.  She put on an awesome show.

Sarah and I must be getting old, because rather than the stand with the masses in front of the stage for three hours, we paid a couple extra bucks to get actual seats on the second level.  Sadly, we're not as hip as we used to be.

But wait, there's more.  Sarah's actual birthday, the 26th, happened to coincide with the J.Crew Warehouse sale down in Lynchburg, VA, where they open up their entire warehouse and sell tons of stuff for about 5% of the retail price. As you can imagine, people getting pretty pumped for this thing, which means you need to show up early to get in line.  Sarah played the "I'm getting over the flu" card, which meant I got to camp out in the snow for four hours.  Is Birthday Week over yet?

Not quite.  The sale was a success, and Sarah found plenty of nice stuff, while I found some new shirts to wear to work to impress the fine people of Ciudad Juarez while I deny their visas.  After that, we spent the afternoon with Sarah's family and opened presents.  Finally, when we got back to Arlington, one thing remained; the annual birthday dinner.  This year we made beef bourguinon and potatoes au gratin, which has been a favorite of ours for years.  And with that, Birthday Week drew to a close.  Happy birthday, my love!