Warning:Photo OVERLOAD!

Woo hoo for 23 years! I always thought I would dread the day that I turned 23 but actually, I was really looking forward to it! It's gonna be a really good year :)

My birthday started off a little crazy, I worked 31.5 hours in 2 days and 14 of those hours were worked on my birthday...but as they say...you've got to do Whatever It Takes! My hard work paid off in the form  of a raise!! I'm super excited about that :) Thursday my sweet sweet boyfriend sent me the most BEAUTIFUL flowers, he is so sneaky!! I got off pretty late on Thursday so Shawn and I went out to a late dinner and then came home and crashed...on Friday I went to lunch with my dad, brother and Shawn. We had pizza and sangria at Grimaldi's. YUMMY!!!!! I originally asked my dad to start a camera fund for me as my birthday present this year because I have really really been wanting to get into photography, but he surprised me by giving me an amazing NEW CAMERA!!! I was so so so excited, a Nikon D5000!!

Isn't she the most beautiful thing you ever did see?! Definitely excited about this new toy!!!!! :)

I literally spent the rest of the day walking around taking a thousand pictures of everything in my dad's backyard, including his two dogs. (They make for pretty cute models!)

 Peppers that he's growing.

Just testing it out, the colors look amazing!

Trying to be super artsy and creative with Alby! (He's the best model)

He just LOVES getting his picture taken ;) haha this cracks me up!

I had so much fun taking close up shots of flowers!

Figuring out how to blur the background...

LOVE this shot haha he's just so pensive, loves TEXAS!

Precious little Shlee...she was verrrry hard to capture on film...

My handsome boyfriend :) I took a thousand pictures of him, he was not very happy hehehe :)

PABLITOOOOO!! My sweet baby boy <3 

 On Saturday Shawn and I got to spend the whoooole day together, which was amazing! We haven't been able to do that much since our jobs are both different hours and days usually. We started off by going to lunch with his dad, then we made an EMERGENCY stop at Ulta (my trusty straightener of 5 years crapped out on me right in the middle of straightening my curly hair..YIKES!), then went to Walmart and picked up the hardest puzzle ever created by man...because, we're cool like that. Once we had our puzzle we headed over to my mom's house where she put together a little birthday dinner for me! It was all so delicious!!!

A little bit of the food that she had, we had all appetizers and they were all completely DELICIOUS!!

The bouquet that she handmade for me. These flowers are so beautiful and my room smells amazing because of them!!

Two types of bruschetta that she put together, traditional with pesto and one with mozarella and prosciutto instead of pesto YUM!!

Her black bean hummus dip and black bean chips.mmmmmm!!

Antipasta (special request of no red peppers, I hate bell peppers, YUCK!) But this was perfect

Bloody Mary's!! She made her own mix and my stepdad put it together, it was awesome!!

 I got some photo's of the cooking master at work! She was so sweet and let me practice my camera skills while she cooked!

Ta da!! Delicious little cheesy rolls (actually I found this recipe on my new favorite website, www.tastespotting.com, it looked so GOOD and Shawn thought it looked absolutely disgusting so my mom made it for me, love you mom!, and her and I didn't like it but Shawn LOVED it) haha funny how that worked out!

My sweet little girl!! Bit Bit :)

(Her and Pablo are actually the parents of my dad's two dogs Alby and Ashley)...we're a family of weird dog namers but I love them!!!

My mom and stepdad got me an AWESOME gift too!!! A couple posts ago I talked about how I made mushroom ravioli at my mom's house and her and Harold went and bought me my very own pasta machine! I am so so so so so excited to be able to use it. But of course I haven't eaten everything out of my pantry yet so I haven't been to the grocery store yet to buy the ingredients to make it. (I just realized the whole above section is about me eating out, but I promise I didn't pay for the food, so I'm still doing good!) hehehe

I'm so excited to be able to make my own spaghetti noodles and ravioli's and tortellini's! It's really really fun and so so delicious!

I also received a really fun cookbook, a scale and a little ravioli cutter! Woo hoo!! GREAT birthday! I wish I had gotten a picture of everyone all together.

And yesterday we finished off the weekend just as great as we started it, Shawn worked during the day so I hung out at my mom's and then my dad's house for a little while. When he got off we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and then came home and rented a movie. It was so great! I love just getting to relax with him when we're not busy and working. It's one of my most favorite things :)

I am so grateful for all the people in my life, my parents (all 3 of them, couldn't ask for a better bunch), my siblings, my friends, my boyfriend...everything...it really meant so much to me to have everyone together laughing and just having a good time. (I'm such a sap)

This Saturday I'm going to meet my precious pregnant friend Brittany to take some maternity shots of her! I'm so excited and nervous, I obviously want them to look so good because I know it will be a great memory for her, but I also want to be able to practice my camera skills. Thanks Britt and Breniyah for being my models!! So hopefully, my next post will be amazing pictures of my beautiful friend (but if I turn out to be a super sucky photographer, then I am not putting them up haha)

Here's to the 23rd year!! Hoping it stays as great as it started out...maybe even better?!