Then There Was The Swag...

First of all, I realized after I posted yesterday that I forgot to tell you about a key feature of my birthday party. As soon as I walked into our private room, Hotass walked up to me and put a pretty, pretty, pink tiara on my head and I was suddenly transformed into a pretty, pretty princess! And, you know, being the attention whore that I am, I wore that pretty, pink, fluffy tiara all night long, even when I went to the bar to pick up the chocolate martini Oscar bought for me. I'm just that way. No pictures of me looking like a pretty pretty princess, but here's the tiara:



Obviously, one of our cats is quite taken with it. He seems to think it's an oddly-shaped mouse. If I leave it in one place for any length of time, he's all over it, and there's nothing like cat slobber on your pink fluffy tiara to ruin your pretty pretty princess feeling. So I have learned to keep it out of his reach. Except when taking pictures of it. Ahem.

Anyway, if that was all I had gotten for my birthday, that would have been outstanding, but there was MORE! And when I got to the gifts from McMama....well, you have to understand that McMama sends the best gifts ever. EVER. I love getting packages from her, even if they're not even for me, because she is just THAT good at finding the perfect gifts. And every time a special occasion rolls around I think there's no way she can improve on her last present, but every time, she exceeds my expectations. Seriously. She's got a gift, people.

So I get to the small pile of gifts that she sent me, and of course they're all wrapped perfectly, with adorable bows and ribbons. And I can tell from the shapes that I have a cd and a dvd in there, so I start with the obvious, and I open the cd. And do you know what I find? This:



Which, given my love of all things Grey's Anatomy, was so perfect. Even more so because I then knew that the dvd had to be this:



But what was really unexpected was this:



Oh yeah....I have a Grey's Anatomy "Seriously." shirt to go with my Grey's Anatomy cd and my Grey's Anatomy dvd. And the reason it's so wrinkled? Is because I totally wore it to watch the season finale early this week. Without washing it! Because I couldn't wait to put it on. That is how much I loved it.

But the crazy thing is...that wasn't even the best part. For you to understand the best part, you need to know two things: first, in addition to being a fabulous mother-in-law and present picker-outer and all around cha-cha chick, McMama is an outstanding baker-type person. She's had her own business doing wedding and birthday cakes for many years (she did our wedding cake and it was so beautiful, I can't even tell you) and recently started doing cookies for special occasions. (She even has a website...please visit her here.) Secondly, my birthday gift last year? Was this:



Which makes more sense when you understand that McMama and I share a love for The Amazing Race (just not this season or the family edition) and the Travelocity Gnome has featured prominently in that show recently. Also? I can't get over the "One's in danger of getting bubbles up one's whoopsy-daisy" commercial. Because that's hilarious. Anyway, I laughed so hard that I almost started crying when I opened up that box and saw my gnome last year. So you can imagine what happened when I opened up this year's box and found this:



All of those little gnome faces looking up at me out of their little box with identical looks of "Am I going to die?" FABULOUS. It does not get any better than that. Truly. I want to turn 30 EVERY year! Heh. And you know what? It's not even over yet. I heard a rumor my Boyfriend put a package in the mail for me. I'll have to report on that later, provided the stuff he sent me isn't too dirty.... Hee! I love my birthday.