I had a pretty awesome birthday yesterday. Kind of weird to realize that I’m a quarter of a century old now!! But great, at the same time :)

Anyway, I documented a lot of my birthday via Instagram, so enjoy :)

We started out at IHOP. It’s birthday tradition for me. I’m really not sure when it was started, but I was pretty little.

Their menu has changed sooooo much since the last time I was there! I usually get pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, but these pancakes are New York cheesecake pancakes! Cheesecake pancakes! Best ever.

My dad got cinnamon roll pancakes. I almost got these because I am a sucker for cinnamon roll filling and frosting.

Haha. That’s part of my birthday shirt. The entire thing was sparkly, I love it. I actually got it the day before my birthday –  part of my presents was shopping trips with my mom :)

Bows from presents make great hair accessories ;)

Took a bubble bath in the jacuzzi tub. With Pandora playing in the background, a nice candle, and playing Sudoku on the Nook Color (It was in a ziploc bag so it didn’t get wet!). The bubbles got massive because I put a bunch of bubble bath in while the tub was running, and stopped when the bubbles were as high as I like them. But I forgot about the jets, which were pretty strong even on low, and I was almost in a cave of bubbles! Loved it.

Chang’s Mongolian Grill for dinner. My favorite. I had two plates full, no joke. And turns out they give you a free meal on your birthday, which I didn’t know about until last night. So heads up for anyone in the area who loves Chang’s!

Birthday cake :) Yep, after my two huge plates of food, I still had a pretty big slice of cake. It was awesome.

As for today, I am going in to the new job to fill out paperwork for a few hours, then swinging by the college to pick up more application paperwork. Then I have to come home and pack, because super early tomorrow morning we are leaving for Salt Lake City for a family reunion! I’m definitely stoked to see my aunt Michelle and my uncle Joe again. And I’ve met my great uncle Hod once before (it’s his 95^th  birthday this week!), but the rest of the family members there are all people I have never met before.

Also, total change of the subject, but you should check out Kaelah’s blog post “Getting real about blogging”. I have been sort of in a blogging funk, I think mostly because I get overwhelmed by the idea of blogging and start to think I need to do it for the wrong reasons (to gain followers, to be relevant to what’s going on in the blogging world, etc) –  but to be honest, being popular has never really been my thing. Letting go of the expectations I put on myself for this blog has been difficult (I’m a perfectionist) but really rewarding. I can blog when I want to, and the pressure of not having to blog every single day has made the times when I do want to post more like a treat than a hassle. And that’s why I started blogging in the first place. I took down my Google Friend Connect widget in the sidebar because seeing those numbers gets really distracting to me, but you can still subscribe, if you want, by copying and pasting the link of my blog to your google reader.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, you guys are awesome and I would love to get to know you all better! Like I said, it’s obvious my blogs have become much more spaced out, but I’m on twitter quite frequently (link in the sidebar), so you can give me a shout if you want to be internet friends :)

xoxo!!! Hope you all have a truly wonderful Monday ♥
Lex

Every 4^th  of July I watch the fireworks from my parent’s deck. They live on a hill that overlooks the entire city, so we can see literally thousands of fireworks each year. Not to mention, I can just blend up a strawberry daiquiri whenever I want and avoid the crowds of the riverfront (which is insanely busy). Our neighbor usually has a show that rivals the city’s anyway.

How were the fireworks in your city this year? Do you have pictures? I’d love to see, if you want to leave links!

xo!
Lex♥