Well, hi there...

Well, well, well...hi there! I'm back. I think. Many of you noticed that my blog was private last week. You know, my thoughts are always going back & forth on the issue and I had my moment where I just felt uneasy with the whole thing. So I just clicked private and forgot about it all for a week. No invites or anything (so no one feel bad that you weren't 'invited'). So after a week to think about it, I can say I don't really want to go private (and yes, I know it's probably silly that I've thought about it so much), but I also really feel like I do need to know who's even still reading this blog. So, do me a favor, will ya? Leave me a comment and say hi. It would give me great peace of mind right now. I know, I'm lame to be asking for a comment, but indulge me this once, mmkay? And besides, it's certainly very possible that I'll be going back private again and soon, so I would need to know who has an interest in keeping up with us, so it'd be a good idea to chime in now! Thanks a million times over. :)

And now, back to regularly scheduled business...since I can't post without a picture, the top picture is at the SLC Temple when we were there briefly on April 27, en route to Idaho for a week. I have all those updates coming up, but wanted to leave you with that picture.

But fast forward a bit to this last weekend, I surprised Garrett with a little weekend 'getaway' for his birthday/our 10th anniversary. It was FUN! An entire decade of marriage, that's kind of hard to believe. And kind of crazy to think that we only left Tyler overnight once when he was 18 months old (out of necessity to come here and check things out before we moved) and other than that, we've never been kid-free since we became parents. OK, something is not right about that! It was nice to remember that before kids, we were us, and that is a good thing. :) And Garrett was shocked to say the least. To start the weekend, I showed up at work with his sport coat and told him we were going out, but didn't tell him where (but it was a 'jacket required' kind of place). I just plugged in the address in the GPS and told him to drive there. :) We ended up at Commanders Palace and believe me, it lived up to the hype of being the best restaurant in New Orleans, a 5 star place. Wow! I can't even begin to use words to describe it all, it could never do it justice. Believe me, it was quite an experience, though. We felt like our desserts were photo worthy, so thank heavens for cell phone cameras (even though they end up looking so poor, not quite sure if it's worth it!) But on the left, we have my fresh Louisiana blueberry shortcake and on the right we have Garrett's bread pudding souffle--their most famous dessert.
We stayed the night at a hotel in the French Quarter and went to brunch at Brennans the next morning. And it is truly the best breakfast you'll ever eat--complete with their famous bananas foster dessert. A 3 course breakfast, complete with dessert--who could complain about that?! And then we headed home and back to the kids after that, but it was amazing how much more we loved them after some time away. ha ha! The weekend was really great, but I do think my favorite thing of it all was how surprised Garrett was by the whole thing. I love surprising people!! I think I could be a professional at it. :) He had NO idea I had anything up my sleeve. And I was so relieved that everything came together like it did!
So, then yesterday (Sunday) was his actual birthday and we didn't do anything too fancy, but I did figure I'd give a fancy shmancy cake a try (his birthday is really the only time I try it, pretty much). So I made THIS cake. A chocolate mousse crunch cake. Complete with homemade ganache and mousse from scratch. Yeah, I'm kind of giving myself a pat on the back here, but hey, it's once a year. :) It was yummy!


Notice two little helpers here--one on the left and one on the right. They were sure excited for their OLD man to turn 32! :)

So, that's a wrap and my regular catch up will resume soon, but I must say Happy Birthday (yesterday) & Happy Anniversary (Wednesday) to Garrett! I love you and am so very grateful for you (and I'll avoid getting too mushy here, you're welcome!). And while I'm at it, I suppose I should just throw in the Happy Father's Day now, and be ahead of the game.

And in the mean time, don't forget to say hi. :) Thanks!