Birthday Weekend.

Friday the 3rd was my last day of my summer job and the first day of my birthday weekend. It was a pretty great day. Since it was the last day of camp we had a BBQ at the beach and Steven came down and joined us for the day. He mostly stayed near the slack line and helped the kids out but it was nice just having him there with us.

I only had one very brief moment in the evening where I thought to myself "aw man... I'm turning 25 in just a few hours and I'm unemployed again!" but as I've grown somewhat used to being unemployed over the course of, well, my life, and on account of the fact that I had a beer in my hand at the time that thought floated through my brain, I really didn't mind too much. We spent the evening at Eastlake (our church) attending the event of the year. Of the last two years really, considering it's been two years since the last time they threw this party.

Drinks 4 Drinks is an event designed to raise money for Charity: Water (their mission is to provide people in developing countries with clean/safe drinking water). I wish I had taken more pictures but I was wearing a dress and since I didn't have a pocket for my camera, I didn't feel like bringing it and my phone takes terrible photos. They had a huge beer/food garden set up outside with wine from Silverlake, beer from Redhook, and some pulled pork sandwiches that smelled amazing. There were donation stations inside along with this catwalk where people had the opportunity to car jerry cans filled with water to get an idea of what women in children in developing nations have to suffer everyday just to drink nasty dirty water that makes them sick. The entire event was completely paid for so that everything we were spending was going directly to Charity: Water. It's kind of fun to be like "well, might as well have another beer -- it is for a good cause you know..."

A cover band called The Herding Cats played for a few hours and I love love love them! Wish we had discovered them a few years ago and could have hired them to play at the wedding. They were so much fun! We sang along and danced and donated and had a blast!

Grand total for the night. Over 50,000 people will benefit from what was raised at this event alone.

You should probably check out the video too (we're in it!). Once you watch it you'll want to make sure you don't miss the next one. http://vimeo.com/47423478?action=share

Steven took me out for birthday breakfast at Jay Berrys Cafe on Saturday morning. I love going out to breakfast -- it feels like such a treat. I had a waffle and a mimosa and we played Cribbage and it was perfect.

We spent the beautiful (and hot!) afternoon with our inner tubes at the Cedar River.

It was a bit of an adventure... we had some trouble finding a spot to get down to the river and then by the time we got to the water one of our tubes had almost completely deflated - ha! Good thing we were just planning to float in a pool and not actually go down the river. We ran into our friends Joy and Cody, or rather, they floated past us, which was really funny. We shared M&Ms and goldfish crackers and just enjoyed the sunshine for a while.

Marvelous view of Mt. Si.

Steven & Steph looking sunny. I love it.

Lena and Aaron met us for happy hour at Ruth's Chris, which was great fun (Aaron's birthday is the day after mine so it's always fun to celebrate together when we can), and then Steven and I went over to my mom's house for a fire and s'mores on her patio. Steven made a perfect marshmallow roasting fire -- ah the joys of being married to an Eagle Scout! It was nice and relaxing to finish the day with Mom and Tara and the s'mores were delicious!

It was a wonderful weekend but I am SO glad to be out of that heat! It was a bit much for me. Thank you to everyone for all of the cards and phonecalls and facebook messages! It was a really special 25th birthday.