Birthday Party!!!

So Julie is a really good planner. She is easily the best vacation planner that I know of, and apparently she is also super duper good at planning a surprise birthday party for my 30th birthday! First of all, she planned a great trip to New York City (one of my favorite places on Earth) with our friends and family, but I had known that there was a trip of some sort for a few months (although the destination was a secret until this party).

What she didn't let me know about was a surprise birthday party at Bill and Debbie's house the weekend before we left. She had told me it was just a birthday dinner with my parents and her parents, and Jim and Amanda and the kids. Pretty standard birthday time. She even got Debbie involved when she asked me what I wanted for birthday dinner (stuffed peppers), they did real good at keeping it secret!

That morning she told me that she went to workout with her friends, but instead she went up to make this fantastic taxi cake! Apparently she also made another one the previous weekend that I also didn't know about. She is sneaky...



Sorry, got ahead of myself!! When I walked in, just my Mom and David and Bill and Debbie were at the door to say happy birthday to me, and then Reagan came running into the house too. As I was giving Reagan a hug hello, everyone stepped out of the kitchen and yelled "Surprise!", and boy was I surprised! It was beyond awesome having all of our friends there to celebrate with us.

So the theme of the party told me, finally, where she was taking me for birthday vacation. I had some suspicions about where we were going, but hadn't know for sure. But the taxi cake, the NY pizza, the hot dogs with sauerkraut, the I Heart NY cupcakes, and the Times Square Happy Birthday Banner, I knew we were going to the greatest city on Earth!!!

Dessert was equally as awesome as the dinner, we had the taxi cake, and some cheesecakes that Julie and I had got from Costco a while back. I'm now wondering if she planned on talking me into buying those cakes all those months ago, just for this...guess I'll never know.



I had trouble figuring out how to cut a cake shaped like a Taxi!



Unfortunately we didn't get a large group picture of everyone, but rest assured the house was full of people! These are the closest we got to group shots, first with the Raths, Hoff and myself.



Then all but 2 of the guys from "the group":


Thanks honey pie, you're the best!!!


Coming up, our trip to NYC!!!

The Ketchup

Well not really the ketchup, but the catch-up... sorry I am sleepy!

Well we didn't post a single thing in August and I can't imagine why not, we weren't even that busy! In the end of July, Mikey was in a wedding for our friends Brian and Kim. We spent a lovely weekend in Denver for wedding stuff and got to hang out with our friends too!

The happy couple, just married!!!


Mikey, Jim, Hoff and Jeff at the reception.

In August, not much was going on... we got to go see Josh Groban one night in Denver with Mikey's Mom and her friend Barb, and all the old people from around the state. He puts on a very excellent show! Unfortunately we didn't take many pictures of that, but just believe me, it was awesome.



The first annual Pro Cycling Challenge was held throughout Colorado in late August, and we were able to see two of the stages, one in Colorado Springs and the other in Denver. The Colorado Springs stage started in the Garden of the Gods and ended downtown. We met our friends Andy and Pam in the GOG and watched the Time Trial, which let us see each rider by himself.

The race was packed with big name riders, like the Tour De France winner Cadel Evans, and famous American riders like Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Christian Van de Velde, Tejay Vangarderen, and Tommy Danielson... just to mention a few. It was pretty cool to see all those guys riding through our own town.

Tour de France winner Cadel Evans.


One of our favorite riders, Levi Leipheimer, former teammate of Lance Armstrong.

On Sunday the race ended in Denver, so we headed up there with some friends and saw them ride around the capital six times before the end of the race. It was impressive to see all those guys riding together and not crashing into each other at the speed they were going.

The riders running going through Denver.

That about sums up the only super cool things we have done recently... well until I tell you about Mikey's birthday trip to NYC!!!