I finally found my #40...

I left number forty blank on my list because I was waiting for something really good to fill it. I think it's been filled. 

My bestie (Can I say that at forty? Other bloggers do! But maybe they're not forty. Maybe they are twenty-nine and can still get away with it. In fact, I've never said it in real life. I just like how it reads).  Anyway, my best friend (yea, that's more my style) Kristen threw a surprise party for me that truly was a complete surprise. I had no idea. We always cook a special birthday lunch for each other and that's what I thought this was. I was wrong! The kitchen was filled with friends from the neighborhood, run club and book club all waiting to surprise me! Kristen had made two  big pots of wonderful soups (Pioneer Woman's cauliflower soup and chicken tortilla soup...try them if you haven't yet), corn muffins, two big bowls of awesome salad, tea sandwiches, subs, and  baquettes. Suzanne provided the amazing dessert (in fact I always think of Suzanne when I write the word dessert because she said she always remembers the word is spelled with two s's because she'd rather have two desserts instead of one). A great big beautiful cake (big enough for forty candles), gorgeous chocolate covered strawberries and carrot cake (2 of my all time favorite desserts!). Kristen had a beautiful champagne toast and everyone so generously brought presents (in fact one of them was a gift card to laser tag....which is one my list of forty things to do!). 

Here's me looking very surprised walking into Kristen's kitchen. I need to work on a more attractive surprised face.

 The beautiful cake with room for forty candles!

 Suzanne, me and Kristen.

It was such an amazing afternoon and I was on a high the whole rest of the day. I felt so special and lucky. I've never had a surprise party and always kind of wanted one but that's not the kind of thing you can put on your list....have someone throw me a surprise party! So thanks, Kristen, for putting it on my list and simultaneously crossing it off!!



On the Pride and Prejudice front, I am a little further into it. I did take a bit of a break to pretend I was a tween and read The Hunger Games...which I read very quickly...because I couldn't put it down...and then I had to google the summary for the second book...which led me to google the summary of the third book. And if there were anymore books in the series I would have googled those summaries too. Seriously. It was good.