I guess I should use the time that Col’s in Pearland for football wisely.  I should use it to bring my blog up to date as the last, almost 2 weeks, have gone by unmentioned (ha, you can see how wisely I used the time since it’s now Friday and my blog still isn’t up!).

However, my brain is currently like cottonwool and I’ve been staring at an empty page for about two hours now.  It would seem that I have zero higher brain function and no matter how much I ask my brain to work, it won’t (more on that later!).

Anyways, God only knows what I’ll end up writing about here…I guess after Seattle, the next ‘big thing’ in Casa McMaster was Mrs McMaster’s birthday! (That’s me by the way!)

Friday the 11th (wow, that was so long ago!) kick-started my birthday weekend.  Col came home from work with a huge bouquet of flowers from our wedding florist.  He brought me lilys, roses, carnations (and a mix of other flowers I don’t know the names of).  They were gorgeous and are still going strong here in the living room – the lily’s (my favourite flower) are still smelling sweetly.  I LOVE flowers!

That night, Col and I headed up to Genghis Grill where we ate dinner with Magz, Sam and two of Sam’s friends from Western Geco, one of them being Gary, the guy who stayed with us for Thanksgiving (who, I keep calling Chris, cause Col says he looks like Chris O’Donnell).

Dinner was tasty (as always), and although we were in the non-Geco minority we still had good craic with the gang.  While we were eating, a guy comes up to us and asks Col about his hockey jersey (he was wearing a Philly Flyers shirt) and asks him if he’s from Philly.

Turns out this guy, Ross, is from Philly and used to work for the Aeros back in 2003.  He stood and had, what must have been a 20 minute or more conversation with us about hockey (here and at home in Norn Iron).  It was very strange! People in Texas don’t tend to talk hockey – and they sure as heck don’t talk hockey with strangers!

After dinner, we decided to go bowling.  The lanes near Magz & Sam’s house are oh-so-very-posh, to the tune of an hour and a half wait for a lane to become free.  We decided, ‘screw that, let’s go play Ligretto’.

For those of you that don’t know, Ligretto is a card game.  It’s kind of like solitaire showdown, it’s fast paced and can quickly get viscious – but it’s tonnes of fun and highly addictive.

This fact is proven by the number of times we play it (as often as we can) and the length of time we play it (as long as we can) – that night, we played it til well after midnight!

Saturday, although it wasn’t my birthday, was designated as my birthday celebration dinner night – which, at the time we thought wasn’t a particularly great idea as it was Valentines weekend and a lot of my friends couldn’t join us.

However, we had a table of 11 adults (and a little person!) and it turned out to be a very fun night!

We went to my favourite Mexican place, Chuy’s (the BEST frozen margaritas!!), aaaaaand we arrived late (Col decided he knew a faster way than both Theresa – who we’d stopped to pick up and I – turned out, he was wrong! LOL!!) and Magz had tied a balloon to my chair and had bought me a ‘kiss me i’m Irish badge to wear’.  It was very cute indeed and made me feel very special!

I drank 4 margaritas, 2 swirls and 2 of their new raspberry margaritas (which, I have to say I’m not overly convinced on, but I might need to give them another try to say for sure…) and although I’d not told anyone that we were getting together for my birthday, there were gifts!

The Stevensons got me a gift card for Barnes and Noble, The Rojas got me yankee candle stuffs, Theresa bought me some delicious queso (or, as Sam likes to call it, ‘liquid cheese’), I should also mention the doc (my scottish friend in the UK) sent me an amazon gift card which helped me hit my total to buy myself a little tv for my craft room too!

After a yummy dinner, Magz, Sam, the terrible two puppy dogs, Col and I headed home.  Once we got home, I was presented with a huge box.  Contained in said box, was 12 freshly made, deliciously gorgeous cupcakes!

While I enjoyed a yummy cupcake, we played Ligretto (yes, again!) before we taught the Maddens how to play Dominoes – which, at the turn of midnight, I discovered was my gift from the Maddens.  A lovely set of dominoes, in a fancy box, complete with little trains! Very cute – and we put it straight to good use!

After a late night, Poppy-dog woke us up early.  Twice.  Apparently, she just wanted to jump into bed beside her uncle Col.  When mean auntie Las kicked her out of bed, she barked at him until he got out of bed! LOL!

Birthday girl had a birthday cupcake for breakfast! whoot!

We went to visit a house with the Maddens (they’re going to be shopping for a house soon and we wanted to see this one!) before we went to Dave and Busters.

Dave and Busters ROCKS! Aside from the God-awful service we got in the restaurant we had a jolly good time.  We played games (the boys even got to enjoy some male-bonding shooting aliens and bad guys time), we bowled (yes, even I participated in the bowling, it didn’t cripple me the next day AND I actually didn’t suck as bad as I normally do – lady luck was shining on me on my birthday! LOL!)

After an afternoon of games and fun, we decided to go back to Magz and Sams for…yes, I’m pretty sure I’m predictable enough at this stage for you to guess…Ligretto! And as the day was all about me, I fancied a chinese which went down nicely before it was home for a cuppa and some Top Gear!

Monday, my birthday celebrations continued! I kid you not – I think I’m the only person who gets a 4 day birthday celebration – not even Jesus gets that!  I had lunch with my SSA lady friends, we enjoyed a tasty Mission Burrito – and yes, there were more presents!

Lisa, my (relatively) new friend (who, I never realised, knew me quite so well!) gave me a HUGE bag of salt and vinegar crisps and a box of chocolates.  I’m not normally a fan of Hershey’s chocolate, so I cracked open the ‘Pot of Gold’ fully expecting to have one and not like it and let Col munch on them.  Six chocolates later I closed the box – whoops! Great choice Lis!

Sharon and Janet both gave me Michaels gift cards (which, I took thorough enjoyment in spending – and bought a whole ton of clearance stickers, paper pads and some plastic storage boxes.)  Cindy gave me cute magnets (that are already on my fridge), notebooks and stationery (again, a pretty spot-on gift for a stationery-lover!), Crystal gave me a jar of her homemade marmalade and made me some delicious amaretto chocolate truffles – (which I’m enjoying as sporadically as I can to save my diet a bit! LOL!) and Julie gave me 2 tickets to the cinema which is a great gift and one I’ve never thought of before! Spot on all round – I was spoilt rotten by such good friends!

As hard as birthdays are, away from home.  My good friend Magz made this birthday very special in spite of it.  She was a rockstar, organised everything, all I had to do was show up! I felt like a princess the whole time and I was spoilt rotten!

I’m such a lucky gal to have such great friends 😀