The Celebrations Begin!

Today is our friend Dan’s birthday and then Friday is my birthday so this weekend was our birthday weekend together since we wouldn’t be seeing them again until probably Christmas time. Tara and Julie plotted for quite a while to give us an awesome scavenger hunt, with our presents hidden along the way. When Julie and Dan arrived Friday night, we were given a letter and told we needed to leave the house.

 

 

Dan decided we would drive instead of just sitting in the car, so we headed out for 10 minutes. When we returned, we beeped the horn and waited for the light to flash 3 times (as instructed LOL). We headed in to the house and began our search. Each clue was well done (as always) and gave us pause on most of them to try to figure out where we needed to go. Some we knew instantly and others were a little bit tougher.

 

 

Once we had collected all of our presents and puzzle pieces, it was time for me to assemble the pieces.

 

 

I immediately knew what our last clue meant – the cabinet containing my race medals! We found the gifts underneath the cabinet and then headed into the living room to open our stuff. We made a theme for Dan this year (between the gift from Tara and I and then Julie’s gifts) of “movie night”. We gave him 4 blu rays, some new jammie pants, a tshirt and some candy to eat while we watched the movies with him (Wolverine, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3 and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns).

 

 

I got some really thoughtful gifts from my favorite people. Julie and Dan gave me framed professional race photos (that they’d apparently purchased throughout the year from the official race photographers!!). Tara made me a photo book of our year and all my conquests in my first year of running. SUCH awesome presents!!

 

Just ignore my mismatched crazy pajamas!

 

After we opened our presents, we had dinner and then decided to play Cards Against Humanity. It is SUCH a fun game and so inappropriate. We all have pretty similar sick senses of humor so we had a great time playing it…so much so that we stayed up until after midnight playing it and we actually went through ALL of the cards we had printed from their website. The whole game. The first time! LOL

After some sleep, we planned on heading to T’s Cafe for breakfast. I’d been dreaming of their Ooey Gooey French Toast since the first time we had gone there a month or so ago so of course I had that again. I even convinced Julie and Dan they should try them too so they got them as part of a breakfast meal combo thing. I also decided to try their hot cocoa this time and I thought it was really good. Nothing special, but creamy and delicious. Tara had a peppermint shot added to hers.

 

Tara’s blueberry pancakes – the size of your face!

 

After breakfast, we headed home where we dropped off Tara and Dan and then Julie and I went up to Rhode Runner to pick up my bib for the Downtown Jingle 5K this morning. I was also going to have them look at my shoes/feet/gait again because my latest pair of Mizunos seem to bother my Achilles and I can’t figure out why. When we got there, there was a packed house looking at shoes so we just picked up my bib and headed home.

We enjoyed just hanging out and watching some of Dan’s new blu rays. It was a nice low key weekend and we had lots of fun. Next weekend, Tara and I will be doing something ourselves for just my birthday on Friday, so maybe we’ll have one of our adventure dates.

My race this morning was really good and incredibly agonizing when I saw my time. I’ll have a recap soon so you’ll have to wait and see why it was so crazy!

 

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