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Food is an important part of celebrating. It just is. And we like food anytime, no celebration required. Here’s a sampling of the birthday fare this year:

Bialys. Adrian always talks about bialys (sort of like bagels, but different). Apparently you can only find them near New York or that part of the east. I even went to some place called Mikey’s Brooklyn Bagel Shop or some such thing and they didn’t know what I was talking about. So a couple months ago I found this recipe and decided I’d make them for his birthday. I am very afraid of making breads because it never seems to come out like I imagine. Here, the dough wasn’t rising right, but it came out okay in the end. Maybe not having anything in my head to compare it to was a good thing.

On Saturday, since his birthday was on Sunday this year, we went to the Il Fornaio Risotteria in downtown Seattle. It was good, as always. It’s hard to find real Italian food (Olive Garden doesn’t count, though I still argue it’s not bad for what it is, you just can’t compare it to actual Italian food).

We split a pizza for an appetizer. It was a little oilier than we felt it should be, but the pesto and veggies were good. Note the nice thin crust. Ahhhh. Looking at the picture makes me want to go to Italy. Or at least back to the restaurant, which is substantially cheaper than flying to Europe.

Adrian and Morgan with the desserts. We had creme brulee AND a chocolate fudge-like cake. Both very good. (Oh, and we had main courses of a grilled pear ravioli and the porcini risotto. Yummy.)

The rest of the birthday food got a little drawn out because my big plans for Sunday didn’t work out until Monday, but I’ll spare you the details. We’ll just say Saturday was the celebration day.

Here we are finally getting to that birthday cake we bought Morgan the night before she was born (coincidentally). We had tried for it on her one week birthday but it was frozen and took longer to thaw than we expected. Bummer. So we broke into it the next day instead. A whole (small) Godiva chocolate cheesecake. So yummy.

Friends and loved ones, we’d just like to put up a quick post before we go to sleep to announce the birth of our sweet baby girl.  She is healthy and strong and her and mama are asleep right here next to me at home.  We’ll post more later as we get the time…so in about 30 years.  KIDDING.  ;)

Thursday was my birthday. For New Year’s Eve, we went to some friends’ house and goofed off, playing Ticket to Ride and then Dance Dance Revolution. (I did one really slow song, figuring it was best to not bounce around too much, but Adrian was getting pretty decent at it.) We actually missed midnight, but that’s okay because we were having fun. So after we left there and came back home, seeing as it was officially my birthday, Adrian really wanted to give me my present then. It was already sometime between 1 and 2 am, so we took it all upstairs and I opened it all on our bed. And now you see what has been keeping me busy and entertained for a few days…
A new digital SLR! I’ve been “hinting” that I wanted one for a bit now. I know we already have a lovely camera, but I have always loved photography and I thought it would be awesome to have for taking good baby pictures and such. And yes, I do have an SLR that I bought in high school… but it’s film and whenever I would use it I was always conscious of not taking too many pictures because I didn’t want to waste the film and have to pay for developing tons of pictures. Anyway, enough with this justification. It was a present, and it’s my birthday/Valentine’s/anniversary/new baby gift. Adrian’s covered for a very long time.
Here is the little lovely, out of the box, though clearly I hadn’t even put the lens on yet. Adrian hunted things down online and even got me this awesome zoom lens that I’ll probably never use to its full potential (the way it should be used I mean) but it’s very very cool to have. I always wanted one for the film SLR (also a Nikon), so I was pretty geeked out, as the phrase goes. He also found a bunch of accessories which I am still learning to use. I was very impressed with everything he picked. He’s definitely getting himself to that illustrious best husband ever award.

I stayed up way way too late reading the manual and playing with it all, but the battery was still charging so finally I had to give up and go to bed. But then I woke up really early and had a hard time falling back asleep because I knew the battery would be charged and I could get up and play if I wanted. Hehe.

So between playing with the new camera and reading the manual and being SO TIRED from (a) staying up late playing with the camera and (b) being 8 months pregnant… I haven’t been blogging. Also, we’ve been working on some fun stuff behind the scenes with the blog. Mostly this falls to Adrian, since he’s the genius with that. If we can work kinks out the way we want, it’ll be a lot of fun, so just wait and see.