It's All About Me

It is a well known fact that I love my birthday. All those who know me also know that I continually try to turn the event into multi-day extravaganzas to celebrate my greatness. And finally, I also love cake.

This year was no exception. I had been anxiously awaiting my birthday since November when I purchased one special occasion cake at the annual Berkeley University ward's sub-4-santa auction. The lovely Sister Pat Hogan (proud mother of a daughter who recently celebrated her 60th year) makes wedding cakes and donated one. Awesome!!! That's right, I bought my own birthday cake. It was for the children. As the year progressed, my birthday party soon became my going away/birthday party. All the more reason to celebrate.

In the two and a half years that we lived together, Courtney and I have thrown several wonderful parties. It was the people that made the parties so spectacular so don't start thinking I'm bragging here. However, one of our finest achievements was the Mackenzie/Alisa birthday party of 2007. It was scary themed so the menu consisted of: questionable cheeses, overly ripe fruit, half-priced sushi, mystery meat, brightly colored mystery drinks, etc. We went so far as to only have used napkins available. It was awesome! I'm pretty sure that no one appreciated our cleverness quite as much as we did. However, we knew it was going to be difficult to beat the ingenuity of the previous year.

So, as with any great party, we waited until the Sunday before the date to start making invitations during Sunday School and Relief Society and then distribute them after church. Earlier in the week we decided to do a black and white cocktail party. This would make it easy to decorate the cake as well as be fancy since I'm a fancy gal. I'm not going to lie, there was some concern about people dressing up in cocktail attire. We're mormons. We don't go to cocktail parties. We don't get dressed up. The invitation said cocktail dress strongly encouraged, so we just had to hope for the best. Everyone dressed up!!! (well, except Dustin) I was so happy that everyone dressed up. Truth be told, not everyone wore cocktail attire, but everyone put thought into his/her ensemble to make sure it went with the black and white theme (again, Dustin excluded--please notice he is in purple and blue, like a bruise).


I had a lovely time at my birthday party. I'm now officially 29, which is great and weird. Just yesterday I was mistaken for a freshman in college--18 year old--so that is pretty exciting. I didn't have my camera with me for most of the evening because someone else was "taking pictures" for me. I think my battery died or something because I don't have a lot of pictures. If any of you took pictures at my party, please send them to me. Please. Here is what I have:

The Bakers! Oh, I do miss living so close to family.



Me celebrating my amazing lung capacity. 29 candles. 1 breath.
(again, please note that someone else took these pictures. I just discovered them on my camera)


Courtney at the bar.


The spread.