Go Shorty, It's Your Berfday!

And go I did! My husband greeted me this morning with a iced chai latte in one of those cute double-walled reusable Starbucks cups. I've been eyeballing this for a while so it was a fun surprise! My husband took the day off work, we packed up the boy, and headed out for a day on the town. First stop:

I love this place, and if you show them your ID on your birthday, you get your meal (or a $10 credit, whichever is less) for free! The food is so good too - who needs Denny's? I had The Rancher; a panini-type sandwich containing steak, caramelized onions, bleu cheese, arugula, and horseradish aioli.

After that we did a little thrifting. Check out the boy modeling this vintage blazer we found:

AW YEAH! I love this kid!

Seriously, how cute is this boy? We ended up not buying it because I have no idea where he's going to wear something like this. It was super cute though, and I loved the vintage label on the inside of the breast of the jacket.

We just hit three stores because we had some plans for the rest of the day.

One of those plans included stopping at this Antique Mall in Phoenix. You know I love this place because I was willing to spend an hour in there and they have NO AC. It was so freaking hot I thought I might melt! I did find a couple of things there, including an awesome old copy (with no copyright date - boo) of David Copperfield for $3. Suh-weet!

Our next stop was the Phoenix Art Museum. Did you know it's free on Wednesday afternoons after 3:00 pm? I've been wanting so see this exhibit!

My husband snuck a photo from upstairs. :) There's a children's section up there that overlooks this gallery. They had some Mexican themed art projects that kids could do up there.

My boy got his art on.

He was pleased with his masterpiece. (can I tell you how much I love that this boy is a lefty?)

Then we decorated some pottery. They had painted these pots with magnetic paint and had colorful magnets that you could use to decorate them. The boy was very fond of this activity.

Check out those calves!

The guys goofed off a little.

Then we worked on recreating some art with magnets. I thought this was a great idea and may recreate it for our fridge!

I couldn't find all the pieces to finish this one, but you get the idea. Neat, huh?

After the art museum we cruised through a Starbucks drive thru to get yet another iced chai latte (I was thirsty! It's my birthday!!!) before stopping for a visit with my mom. We were only there for a little while though, because we had to hustle to our last stop of the day before they closed:

Awww, yeah! Where I live, there are three restaurants owned by the same guy - Liberty Market, Joe's Farm Grill, and Joe's Real BBQ. All three offer a free meal on your birthday. It's not uncommon for their fans to try to hit all three in one day; it's a practice referred to as the Birthday Trifecta. The seating at the Farm Grill is outside, so although the burgers are fantastic, there was no way I was making that leg of the Trifecta in AUGUST. Forget that.

I was happy with just the two we managed to do. At Joe's Real BBQ I had a huge baked potato with pecan smoked ham on top.

Yeah... I'm totally not staying on my diet plan on my birthday. You can forget that too.

After we were done eating, I noticed it was 5 minutes to nine. Liberty Market was just across the street, so I grabbed the boy and ran over there just before they closed for one more thing.

I mean, you gotta have cake on your birthday, right?