HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.

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The brownie pan to end all brownie pans. Andrew won't come home anymore to find every single edge piece carefully carved out with only the gooey middle left behind.  

Ha! Who am I kidding...now there'll be nothing left!

My purse exploded with a strange sound on our way out for dinner. What I found inside was Andrew's cleverly hidden gift to me: my very first smart phone. 

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I hope to learn to operate it in the near future. Keep me in your prayers.

I received the sweetest, homemade birthday card from my little sister. I labeled it for you so you would understand the story. Cute, huh? Her likenesses are impressively accurate.

In case you're wondering, this is not from one of my 5-year old twin sisters. Or the eight-year old. It's from my twenty-four year old sister in grad school. But it tops the list as one of my most favorite birthday cards ever. 

Did I tell you Lane is living with us right now? Well, he is. And he enthusiastically announced that his gift to me would be homemade gyoza. 

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Even if I didn't LOVE the stuff (which I do), I never would have argued with him. He and Andrew lit up like Christmas trees discussing all of the Japanese ingredients they would need to purchase. 

Deep concentration. Lane and I are filling the won ton wrappers and sealing them shut with water. The insides consist of cabbage, pork, mushrooms, and a whole lot of spices and herbs I've never seen before.

Gyoza...pot stickers...mandoo...about the same delicious thing. We ate lots and lots of them with sticky rice and chopsticks while I tried to follow Andrew and Lane's story swapping about their crazy experiences in Japan. 

Anyway. It's official. I am 27 now. I suppose I should start feeling like an adult sometime soon...

When did you guys start feeling "adult-like?"