Happy Birthday to Shelly!

Today Shelly begins the last year in her 30's! And since you all know Shelly doesn't have just a birthday but a birthday week, her events began last night. We went to Arlington and met up with one of my sister Mandy's best friends, Jayna. Jayna moved from Oklahoma to DC a couple of years ago to work for one of the congressional newspapers. She and her husband Matt live in Arlington and work in DC and Alexandria. We decided on Cheesecake Factory as I figured they had the most choices of birthday cheesecakes for Shelly. We all had a great time catching up and the wait staff sang to Shelly as they presented her Snickers cheesecake.


Anderson and I both were corduroy pants and despite OU stinking up the game last week, he wore his OU socks since we knew Jayna was an OSU fan.


When we got back to the hotel we realized something was once again out of the ordinary as Daphne was not right there waiting for the door to open. Yes, she was at it again. Early in the day someone from the hotel staff brought us a big chocolate bar and some hot cocoa mix as their way of wishing us a nice relaxing weekend. Rushing out to dinner we accidentally left those on the coffee table and I guess Daphne just couldn't resist the urge.


This is her guilty look. She always pins her ears back and hunkers down.


But as many of you know who have read previous stories about her getting into chocolate, it doesn't seem to affect her.

This morning we decided to make our first visit across the street to Dunkin' Donuts. After all, it is Shelly's birthday. We've enjoyed some coffee and donuts and Shelly opened her presents from me. She got some Burberry perfume and this watch.

Now we're off to Richmond (about 2 hours away) to stay the weekend with one of Shelly's good friends, Jeanne. We have visited she and her husband David before there and they have also visited us a couple of times in KC. We'll enjoy more birthday festivities there then I'm playing a golf tournament there tomorrow afternoon. We'll head back here to the DC area on Monday, in time to get settled in the hotel and not have to fight the huge crowds expected in the area for the inauguration. I'm out of school Monday and Tuesday for the holiday and inauguration so we plan to enjoy a relaxing few days. Since Daphne chose the chocolate maybe we can still salvage the hot cocoa mix.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mike
Springfield, VA