Birthday Blast weekend

So Sunday was my birthday and it was stinkin' amazing. The whole weekend was a birthday bash of sorts, starting off with a Trojan VICTORY!!! This is a 1875% increase over last year, when my birthday actually fell on a HOME game against Washington.......which we subsequently lost.....so that wasn't the best starter for my birthday last year but I'm happy that Lane, Matt and the rest of the Trojan men were able to overcome a shootout with Arizona to win the game. (side note: Zona has one of the worst defenses in the nation, and we still had a hard time putting them away!)

Man our boys look good in cardinal and gold!

Also took my friends Mallory and Sarah to the game with me and it was a blast, except for the fact that it was stinkin' HOT. The cool thing is that it was their breast cancer awareness game so all the security people, instead of wearing their normal bright yellow jackets wore pink ones instead. We even got free pink bracelets (a la the Live strong rubber ones) so I took a few extra for my mom :) (breast cancer survivor for 20 years!!!)

After the game Sarah and I met a few of our other friends at a Tunisian/Moroccan restaurant in Hollywood called the Moun of Tunis. I had been twice before, and it was pretty darn good. You sit in these booths, eat with your hands and towards the end of the meal a belly dancer comes out! It's a fun experience :)

mmmm, b'stilla..... (basically it's a pastry of sorts with meat and egg inside, that's covered with powdered sugar and cinnamon - odd combo to be sure, but it's still delicious!)

After the b'stilla, we also received brik, salad, couscous and lemon herb chicken! it is a TON of food, but it's all very delicious so we were good with that!

Then came the present openings!

I got a lot of movie passes for my birthday...almost like my friends know I love going!! Squeee!!! And it's perfect timing of course b/c in the fall all the best movies come out so I am *set*

Of course my friend Lindsay got me leopard flats (she works at Shoe Dazzle after all...) but she knows I love the leopard print and with it being in fashion now it's a lot easier to get :)

After all the food and present opening came tea in little cups that look suspicious, but fear not, it's only TEA inside!!

We thought it'd be funny to get a picture of us all with our tea :)

Whew! So that was all Saturday, and now onto the actual day itself. Had church, then a bbq for college students right after (including us college staffers) and everyone sang to me there which was embarrassing but also really fun :) Then went to my parent's house in Pasadena and watched some football (including a great run by Joe McKnight for the Jets!) then had an amazing dinner! I asked my mom to make me my favorite dish, BBQ chicken pot pie which she got out of a Cooking Lite magazine years ago but doesn't make all that often. She even made TWO dishes of it so that I could take one home with me!!

mmmmm, I'm having some for lunch too and I think I'm starting to get hungry for it looking at these photos....

My mom also used a bright orange tablecloth that I know she got just for me because she is not the biggest fan of orange (she was happy when I got into USC because she thought my orange "phase" would be over now that my school colors were red and yellow instead of orange and blue, but I told her that red and yellow together make orange, so really, orange is a super spirited USC color :)

I got to see almost my whole family (minus my oldest sister and her husband, because, you know, Hawaii is a little far away for a weekend jaunt) and my nephews!!!

My youngest nephew, who is about 8 months and already wearing 1 year clothes :)

To cap off the night my mom and I (joined later by my dad) watched X-Men First Class because that movie is awesome and all sorts of amazing

Not to mention that Michael Fassbender is quite the stud in it....

Then on Monday (whew!) went out to dinner at Cheesecake Factory at the Americana with a good friend of mine from college and it was so fun! We ate, laughed, she gave me Hunger Games themed presents (which are AWESOME, and technically still being sent but I am so excited to have them!!) we walked around a bit and then called it a night. She makes me laugh like no other so I was really looking forward to seeing her and it was a great night!!

This was my free "dessert" from Cheesecake, and I put dessert in quotation marks because it was basically whipped cream with some fudge...so I guess the recession hit them too !

So it was a great celebratory weekend and even last night at Life group the girls made me brownies with orange frosting and they all signed a card for me which was super sweet and I def made myself wait until I got in the car to read it in case it made me teary :)

Birthdays are awesome and wonderful but after this weekend I'm fine with waiting another year!

And lastly, here is the funny of the day :)