A Grand Celebration

Wednesday March 16th is my 28th birthday. Wow, time flies when you are doing life! This past Saturday we celebrated my birthday with Matt's family. It was either this weekend or next weekend and all the men are busy at a retreat next weekend, so we celebrated this weekend! We went out to Macaroni Grill where I got my favorite pasta dish, Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni, and it did not disappoint :)I also got sang happy birthday in Italian. Pretty cool! It was fun hanging out with everyone and enjoying good food and good company. After dinner we all went over to Mark and Elaine's for dessert and gift opening. Celeste made an awesome ice cream cake with an Oreo crust and Reeses cups on top. It was SO yummy!
As far as gifts go, I pretty much feel spoiled rotten this year :) Matt, Mark & Elaine and my parents all went in together to buy me a new set of pots and pans!!!! So exciting. Matt took me to the Calphalon Outlet store and I got to pick out what I wanted. It was great, cause we got to pick all the pieces separately from the clearance room so it was less expensive than buying a set and we got the pieces we really wanted and knew we would use. I ended up getting the Tri-Ply stainless steel cookware. Here are pictures of what I got!
The whole set:

Three sizes of pans:

One "Everything" pan with high sides:

One small sauce pan:

One large sauce pan:

And last but not least, a good cleaner to keep them in great condition:

I also got a gift certificate to InSpa from Nate and Jen!!! I was so excited, I was just thinking the other day: "Hmm, I wonder if I'll be able to afford another pedicure before Kahlan is born" and whala!! I'm gonna get a Mani & a Pedi!! Then Dan and Celeste got me a box of Fran's Sea Salt Caramels... my favorite special treat!! (Plus, the cake Celeste made). Boy, it was a good birthday celebration day! The only thing that could have made it better would have been to have my side of the family there too. But, maybe one day :) Thank you Flint family for making it a special day for me! I love you!