Friday, January 02, 2009

Daniela is the Champion

I'll finish my post about our Ecuador trip later. I'm tired of writing about it.

I turned 27 on November 29th and Daniela made it an awesome birthday. Daniela woke up early that day and made me breakfast. That was the beginning of a 2-day celebration. She made 2 plates of bacon, eggs, toast, OJ, and cherry pecan coffee cake while I talked to my dad on the phone. After that it was off to work. We normally work Saturdays and Sundays and take Mondays off. So we agreed to celebrate on Sunday (the 30th) since we didn't have to work the following day.

I knew D was making me a cake at the bakery, but she wouldn't tell me anything about it. In the back freezer she boxed my cake up and turned it toward the wall so I couldn't see inside. Then she wrote notes all over it telling me to scram and that looking inside of the box was punishable by death. We brought the cake home after work and it was beyond my wildest expectations. I was actually shocked by how awesome it was.



She wrote "For all the roles that you play... I love you more everyday" on the top and then put ridiculous pictures of me all around the sides and labeled them with the roles I play. My favorites were vampire hunter, dog whisperer, and ninja. Check my link to Flickr to see pictures of the cake.

After I extinguished the re-lighting candles, Daniela gave me a giant tea cup she had decorated at one of those pottery places. I knew she was making me something because we had a conversation about it days before. I told her that she was forbidden from stenciling anything and I wanted whatever she was going to do to be hand-drawn. The cup was magical.


She drew the entire Las Vegas Strip around the cup and put our two bunnies in the foreground, commenting on the casinos. The cup has a few inside jokes. While in front of the Luxor, our bunnies are saying 'Space!' You see, some douche bags insist that you can see the beam of light coming out of the top of the Luxor from space, which is silly for two reasons. First, you CAN see it from space because urban areas are bright at night. You can see the Luxor light like you can see the light coming from our house in Henderson. Second, no you can't. Not in the way that people mean that. That's stupid. After I opened my present, Daniela cooked dinner for all of us (D, me, Max, and Emilia). She made a salad with goat cheese and carmelized walnuts, pesto and sun-dried tomato quiche, and we had a bottle of wine.

The next day we had to return to work. The bakery closes at 4pm on Sunday, so I had that going for me. D took me to In 'N Out Burger for lunch and I even went home an hour early. When I got to our place in Henderson though, Max told me that this guy who works at Body English ordered a last minute cake and I had to run it over. I was really annoyed. So I got back to the bakery and had one of the decorators write "Happy Birthday Brad" on it. Ugh. Brad. Who is this guy Brad who needs a cake so badly? No offense to anyone named Brad, but this name made it even worse. So I got over to the Hard Rock in record time and got the room number from Max. When I knocked on the door though, D opened it! Sneaky monster! She had rented the room and decorated it while I thought she was at the Tropicana location. We ate some of Brad's cake and D took me to Nobu for dinner. Nobu is rocking. We had some tempura, sushi, and a chicken teriyaki dish. Our waiter was the son of a guy who works at the bakery, and he brought us a dish of sashimi, compliments of the restaurant. After dinner, Daniela took me to O! at the Bellagio as well. The show was awesome, as all Cirque du Soleil shows are. The next day we got breakfast at Lucky's in the Hard Rock and were home before noon. Daniela is the champion.