What a Weekend - Part 1

January is always a very busy month around our house with Ryan and Ryley's back-to-back birthdays, and this year we took it up a notch by adding Winter Basketball to the mix.  This past weekend included both actual birthdays, although the celebrating started early and will finally be complete a little over a week later.

This year, Ryan and I decided to actually go out by ourselves to celebrate his birthday.  For this rare night out, I actually made a reservation for one of Blue Mesa's tequila dinners that I  read about every month and always think we'll go to sometime....and sometime never comes... well it finally did, and it made for a wonderful night out.  The highlight of the dinner was having the bartender make us custom margaritas.  Basically, the waiter brought out shots of tequila and we took them to the bar that was set up with all kinds of potential margarita ingredients.   I decided to have them recreate a margarita I had tried several months ago that had cucumber and jalapenos in it - sounds weird but don't knock it till you've tried it!   Between the yummy, exotic margaritas and the delicious food, we had a great night out.

The next day, Friday, was Ryley's birthday. Ryan and I took vacation so we could take treats to Ryley's class to celebrate with and have some family pics taken in the afternoon.  Oh, and we ran 10 miles between the time we dropped Ryley off and went back to her school at lunchtime with cupcakes.  Yes, I do believe we had a temporary lapse in sanity, especially considering the temperature was about 30 degrees that morning!  I don't have any pics of the run (that would be pretty boring anyway!), but I do have a good one of Ryley celebrating her birthday at school...

And here are some of my favorites from our family photo shoot at Portrait Innovations...

So after the photos were done, we came home to have a birthday dinner with my mom and let Ryley open her gifts.  Here are a few pics of the festivities. 

Ryley unwrapping one of her gifts...

Granna gave her a Bitty Baby from American Girl which Ryley absolutely adores - here's Ryan trying to get the doll out of her packaging.

Ryley even had to take some pictures of Abby (that's what she named her baby!) herself.  Not bad photography for a 5 year old!

And here's Ryan and Ryley playing with one of her gifts - a Nintendo Wii uDraw - pretty fun!

So after dinner and gifts, we then had to head to a bounce house birthday party for one of Ryley's best friends from school, who happens to have the same birthday as Ryley.  See - I'm only through Friday and it's already been a crazy busy weekend - more to come in part 2!