The Barefoot Ballerina: the birthday post.

Well, it's two weeks after my birthday, and we are finally done celebrating. Talk about a birthday month...

On my actual birthday weekend my parents came to Dally! We went shopping on Saturday afternoon, and then met my sister and her hubby for dinner at P.F. Changs...

Austin and me at the table

My plate...this was gone in about 5 minutes...

Making a wish*

After dinner, we all came back to our apartment and had dessert...

Pecan Pie is my new weakness

...and we played "the game of things":

Austin and Justin tied for first. I lost. Womp.

On my birthday morning, this was my breakfast:

French toast, fried eggs, and fresh strawberries.

Then we watched the Superbowl.

Yay Giants. Actually, I didn't really care who won. Yay commercials!

The weekend after I turned 23 I went home to Houston to celebrate with my dad's side of the fam. We went to Lupe Tortilla's and I ordered fajitas...

And a couple of these:

Then we went back to my Aunt and Uncle's and had cake & ice cream and presents!

I had a great weekend with the fam! I like hanging out with them :)

I had a wonderful birthday, and I love and appreciate all my family and friends for making it so special. Twenty-three seems like it's going to be a great year!

But I know what you guys are really interested in...the loot! Here's all my presents...

The first thing I received for my birthday were these beautiful flowers from Austin:

They looked great on my new bookshelf from my parents:

I LOVE this shelf...my parents are awesome for getting it for me!

I also received a TON of birthday cards/money/gift cards from my fam bam, and I SO appreciate it all! Makes me feel very loved :)

Oh and shoes!! I got three pairs of flats that I love...a black pair, a tan pair, and a dark brown pair. My sister also got me the book The Help. Can't wait to start reading it!

As if all of that didn't make me feel loved/spoiled enough, Austin surprised me with this:

A cooking class at Central Market where we got to prepare a 4 course meal and then eat it! I died.

Here we are in our aprons:

We started the class with some bread and the best butter I've ever had in my life. I could not stop eating this:

While I was stuffing my face with the B&B, we started to prep our dinner. Our chef instructor (who knows anything and everything there is to know about food, wine, cooking, etc) walked us through dicing strawberries, chopping herbs, making salad dressing, slicing oranges into pretty shapes, marinating shrimp, grilling, frying artichokes, preparing mashed potatoes using a "ricer", and macerating berries! I felt so educated, and Austin even said he liked it!

Here we are at our station:

Austin getting down and dirty with a lemon juicer:

It was so much fun to cook dinner with a trained chef by my side. I loved every second of this evening, and Austin is the best boyfriend ever to have given me this present.

Here is our meal, course by course: