I have done so much and taken so many photos in the past couple of weeks, but have not had time to write about anything! Since I was sick the first couple of weeks of December, I put off pretty much all my Christmas shopping till the last minute. Not to mention that I keep getting orders for crocheted snowballs, which is great! But I kinda forget I have my own crocheting and crafting to do before Christmas and keep agreeing to more custom orders. I’ve done my last Etsy order of 2008, though. So in the four days left before Christmas, I’ll be making and wrapping presents, getting them boxed up and addressing labels, all that jazz.

Before any more time passes, though, I need to tell you what we did last weekend! If you follow me on Flickr or Twitter or you happened to read Brenda’s post the other day, you already know that last weekend we were partying with friends to celebrate Heather’s 30th birthday!

Heather happens to be Brenda’s sister-in-law, which is how I met her. But she has become a good friend over the last year too. Heck, every member of Brenda’s family is a friend of mine now, and all my family members are her friends too. That’s just how we roll.

Anyway. Brenda called me a few weeks ago, wanting to know if I had any great ideas for Heather’s 30th birthday party because she was stumped. I suggested painting pottery and then somehow ended up inviting them all to come down here for the weekend and offering to make a chocolate cake. I’m not sure if it was really my idea or if I was tricked into it.

Just kidding! Even if it wasn’t all my idea, I was totally jazzed about it. I love making homemade birthday cakes, and I love having people come to visit, and I love painting pottery. I’d been meaning to have Heather and her girls down for a visit since we moved here in July so this was our chance, and we took it. So what if everyone was either just getting over or just coming down with a horrible cold!? It’s December, that’s life. We managed to have fun anyway.

We all had dinner at an inexpensive but yummy Chinese restaurant and then went back home for cake. It might have been the ugliest cake I’ve ever frosted, but it was tasty! After the cake was consumed, we planned to head to my favorite pottery studio. But Annalie and Superchic were having so much fun playing that they didn’t want to stop. They stayed home with my mom and Troy and built forts and dressed up and doctored Annalie’s stuffed animals in their clinic and watched a Christmas movie. The rest of us, including Bug, had fun painting. We ended the night with the kids playing musical bedrooms but we all got to sleep eventually.

The next morning we went up to Snail Mountain. It was a chilly, windy day so we didn’t get coffee and doughnuts first. We just climbed around a bit, took a few photos, and danced on the stage.

That afternoon, Sue (who was getting over a bad cold and cough) and Brenda (who was coming down with a cold) stayed home while Bug took her nap, and the rest of us went to lunch at one of our favorite Mexican places. Then we explored Old Town for a while, since Heather and her girls had never been there and it really is fun to wander there, exploring the Estudillo House and poking around in the shops.

Oh, and somewhere in there, Heather opened her presents. Brenda had gotten her a french press coffee maker, while we got her a red electric kettle just like mine. We didn’t even know about the other’s gifts, they just happened to match up perfectly.

It was a busy weekend, but totally fun. I hope you had an awesome 30th birthday weekend, Heather! As Brenda said, welcome to the Middle Ages.

Many more photos from the birthday-bash weekend are in the photoset CC’s 30th birthday on Flickr.