Happy Birthday to Me!

As I am sure you all know, Friday was my birthday! Actually, I got an early start celebrating this week. On Thursday, my salesperson Debbie came to town to celebrate with me. A big group of us all went to lunch at Chris Madrid's, which was delicious as always! Then the new Team Debbie (consisting of Katherine, Debbie, and me) spent most of the afternoon getting Deluxe pedicures (this involves getting your foot dipped in hot wax which was a new thing for me, but felt pretty good) and then going shoe shopping! Of course I had to get open-toed shoes so I could show off my newly painted toes! It was such a wonderful day, although it did involve staying a few hours late to make up for the hours I was out of the office in the middle of the afternoon...

The next morning on my actual birthday, I got to work and Amanda had cinnamon rolls cooking in the toaster oven for me. (Okay yes, everyone in my life knows the way to my heart is through my stomach... and new shoes.) So that was a delicious way to start my birthday! Then a little while later, I got a flower delivery and to my surprise it was from my parents! I got a beautiful bouquet of multi-colored roses and they smelled wonderful!

And my desk had been decorated by my wonderful co-workers in all pink!

As if that wasn't enough celebration, I got another floral delivery that morning from Debbie and Katherine! These were flowers that can later be planted in the yard too. Very pretty and of course pink!

Since my birthday fell at Easter-time this year, we had my favorite work event of the year on my birthday - the Easter Egg hunt!!! I was the reigning champ since I found the most eggs last year and I founded the Easter Egg hunt in our office my first year there, so it's a tradition that I get very excited about (this is why Debbie came to town on Thursday instead of my actual birthday, so as not to interfere.) So we also got festive this year and all wore bunny ears all day (there was also a handicap during the egg hunt that if you didn't wear your ears you had to subtract 5 eggs from the total number you found).

My original lunch buddy, Melissa, and I wear our ears proudly!

Katherine and I have lots of fun together in our shared office. Here we are with our ears on. Yes, I did hop around the office part of the day, when I remembered to.

So we all had boxed lunches brought in to fortify ourselves for the big event. Trisha hid all the eggs this year and about 10 minutes prior to starting, I started standing by the door so I could be first out the door. Competitive advantage, yes. Amanda was right behind me and then followed the rest of the girls. We got a running start and hunted for eggs outside by cars, sign crates, filing cabinets, boxes of files, and in the end as a group we found 161 out of the 162 eggs. Good thing they didn't put chocolate candy in them!! I had to turn over my champion status to Amanda who found 25 eggs, and I tied for second with 22. There was a cheater in the bunch (isn't there always?) who brought eggs from home and added them to his bag of eggs so that during the count it seemed like he had more than he really did. Too bad he brought cascarones which we knew were not included in the ones Trisha hid, so he was caught in the act and his plan back-fired when we cracked his cascarones on his own head.

Needless to say it was a wonderful way to spend my birthday at the office. Thanks to all who made it special, and also to those who left voice messages, text messages, and emails as well. I will try to find time this week to get back to everyone, but since it was Easter weekend there hasn't been a dull moment since Friday!