Week of Awesomeness

Somehow the week of my birthday is always awesome. It's a gift. I don't know how it always works out that way, but it does. Last year I spent the week with my new husband: trying new restaurants, playing games with friends, watching new movies. The year before was 7 days of straight party (for those of you who were there, you know what I mean). There is always way more food than there should be, lots of laughing, and I always try to do something new. This year I missed my free Red Robin burger and unlimited steak fries, but it lived up to tradition nonetheless.

So the single best thing about the week was that Spencer had the week off from work for Chinese New Year. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present. So every day started with sleeping in and breakfast in pajamas. Perfection.

The week started off with a bang (literally) as we shot off fireworks after church on Sunday. We have some major pyros in our branch, so why not shoot off over 20,000 firecrackers to celebrate?

Borrowed this picture from a friend.

Monday we did NOTHING. It was beautiful. We sat and cuddled and watched movies and tv and just were. And I loved it.

Tuesday was the big day. We slept in (again, perfection) and Spencer made me open my presents before breakfast. The best gift was a big box of Grape Nuts, my favorite cereal! Don't hate y'all, you don't have to eat it. After breakfast we went bowling with some of our Flagship friends, so so fun. I love that there is a bowling alley here and that it's cheap.

Spencer fell down, teehee

First game

Second game- We had to bowl opposite handed.

That night we tried out a new place we haven't been before called Spicy Joint. At least that's the English name. It's a Sichuan (Szechuan)-style place so everything is, well, spicy! But it was super good, and we loved the food.

Happy birthday to me!

Cumin lamb, sweet and sour pork, and fried green beans

The next day we went on a somewhat spontaneous and impromptu trip to a small water town called Tongli, which I will write another post about. And the next few days were spent relaxing, playing games, eating out with friends, and enjoying the Chinese New Year. We ended the Chinese New Year by going up to the roof of our building (over 54 stories) and lighting off fireworks/crackers of our own and trying (note the word choice) to light off some floating lanterns. Then Spencer and I went to the Confucius temple to see the Lantern Festival. It ended up being kind of like a huge street fair, but it was fun and it was PACKED. If you need a reference for how many people there were you should know that it was reported that over 4 hundred THOUSAND people attended the pre-festival the night before to try to AVOID the big crowds. So the amount of people estimated to attend the day of was almost a million.

Reveling in the crazy

It was nuts. And we were literally herded like cattle. And I loved it.

The only sad part was when I accidentally tripped on the curb and broke my only waterproof shoes.

Oops. Hopefully it doesn't rain much for the rest of our time here.

But it was a great week. And I loved getting to spend it with Spencer. In China. With fireworks every day. I pretend they were all for me.

This is RIGHT outside our window.