Buca di Beppo

It seems like just yesterday I was in Aruba with two of my closest girlfriends celebrating my 30th birthday. Hard to believe that was 10 years ago & now I am going to be celebrating my 40th!! I thought turning 40 would be as depressing as turning 30 was for me but I must say it was more traumatic turning 35 years old for some reason!? I decided earlier on during the year to just embrace it, enjoy it & that I did!

The birthday festivities started the Saturday before my birthday. My girlfriend Heather (HK) gathered the girls who all went to Destin, FL (minus Kari) along with our dear friend Anthony & his wife for a pre-birthday dinner gathering at Buca di Beppo. She surprised us all by reserving the VIP table back in the kitchen so we were able to see all the food made, put together & expedited by the servers which was a lot of fun.

HK managed to surprise me once again with an unexpected appearance by my dear friend Deanna. Deanna lives in Austin, TX & just so happened to be in Missouri visiting family during the week & made a special trip to KC for my birthday dinner. It was such a great surprise & as always, so good to see her & catch up.

Our dinner consisted of margarita pizza, stuffed mushrooms, fried calamari, chix parmesan, lasagna & spaghetti/meatballs & it was SO good! We were SO stuffed after it was all said & done but made sure to leave room for a little birthday dessert - tiramisu. This was of course after all the wait staff came & embarrassed me by singing "happy birthday" & made me blow out the candles on this huge candelabra.

After dessert I opened up all my gifts from my very generous friends & then we ended up taking a few more photos of the group. 

While everyone else decided to call it a night, me along with Deanna, HK & Camille decided to walk on over to the Cheesecake Factory for cocktails on the patio & catching up on the happenings of each of us since we were all gathered in Destin. It was a gorgeous evening to be sitting outside & before we knew it, it was 1am & time to call it a night.

It was a wonderful evening spent with such very dear friends & a great way to kick off the birthday week festivities :)