My 30th Birthday Party

I can't believe I'm 30!!! For my birthday, Nigel arranged a party for me and invited all my friends to the Macaroni Grill in Dublin, CA. Italian is my favorite! He wouldn't tell me anything about it though - just that he was doing something for me the night after my birthday with my friends and his family. We all enjoyed some wonderful Italian food, and at the end a man brought out this fudgy cake with a candle on it. He then sang "Happy Birthday" to me in Italian with his beautiful voice. After dinner, we went to Bob and Merrie's house for cake. Nigel had ordered a birthday cake from Fatema, who made our wedding cake. This one, however, was a 4 layer almond cake with chocolate ganache filling. What a sweet husband I have!!!

I should also tell the story of my birthday itself. Nigel couldn't wait until morning for me to open my gifts, so as soon as midnight hit and it was May 11th, he handed me the gifts. I chose, however, to only open one. It was a beautiful black and white pearl necklace. The next morning I opened another gift, and it was a matching black pearl necklace and bracelet. How sweet! The most unique gift, and appropriate for a 30th birthday for sure, was from my friend Brittany. She gave me the new Tickle Me Elmo Extreme. It is hilarious!!! If you haven't seen it, get one!!

I left work at noon on my birthday to spend the rest of the day with Nigel. We met up at his mom's house. She couldn't resist and cooked us a wonderful lunch. She is such a GREAT cook!! That night, Nigel told me we had dinner plans but again wouldn't tell me where we were going. It turns out he had made reservations at this cute little Italian restaurant in Alamo called Ristorante Forli. They had live music as well, so we danced to some of the old standards after a wonderful dinner.

I am blessed. I have wonderful friends, a husband who treats me almost too well, a great family (who is too far away), and a wonderful family of in-laws. What more could I ask for in the people that surround me? God is good.

A visit from friends (new friends for me)

The last week in April we hosted Nigel's good friends from Pakistan, Haseeb, and his wife Itti (pronounced It-thee). It is very hard for a Pakistani to get a visitor's visa to the US right now. So we thought the first time I would ever get to meet them was if we went to Pakistan.

However, Haseeb works for Motorola, and won a sales award, WNNR, for which the company flew him to Hawaii and gave him and his wife (along with all the other WNNRs and their spouses) tons of praise, recognition, free gifts including a gold-plated cell phone, and the whole vacation which included their stay at a fancy resort. I want to work for Motorola! No wonder their phones are so expensive.

Anyway, since the company wanted them to travel to Hawaii for business, it was easy to get visas for them. Then Haseeb requested to fly through San Francisco with a stopover on the way back for 4 days. They agreed, and so they stayed with us and we traveled all over the Bay area. It was a blast!!

Here is a link to my public Picasa gallery, which includes an album from their visit with a few of my faves:

Itti and Haseeb's Visit April 07

Their visit also meant a week of cleaning and finally completely putting together our house. So now I have a functional office/spare bedroom/studio!! I'll take some pictures of our place now and post them soon, since everything's finally in order.