jb's birthday and randomness.

a few years ago my mom got emme an advent calendar with all the little drawers you can open on each of the 25 days of christmas. i've done sort of different things with it every year, but this year i just put in two m&m's and a little note with an activity. the activities were mostly provided by my friend emma who did all the hard work of coming up with them, typing them into a doc in a cute font, etc. jb and i just cut them up and rolled them into little scrolls and assigned them to the days we thought would be most appropriate for each activity. some days had gifts (christmas jammies, a christmas book, slippers), some days were for more charitable activities (get canned goods to donate, toy/coat donations, etc), and some days were for crafts or an outing. two highlights were: going to a christmas movie (we saw the peanuts movie - so cute!) and going to see christmas lights. we went to mozart's coffee shop for their 15-minute outdoor light show and hot cocoa. so cute.

also stuck in the middle of all the christmas hoopla was jb's 35th birthday! i managed to snag a babysitter and we went to uchiko, our most favorite restaurant in the world. it's totally a super special occasion place for a dinner like that - we do it at most once a year - but it is worth every bite. the food is gorgeous and beautiful and the experience is really unparalleled, topped off by fried milk for dessert. i feel like his birthday gets the shaft every year, especially since we had kids, but it was super nice to take a night off from everything and just enjoy each other's company.