Birthday Times!

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When I reveal that I’m a Christmastime baby to someone (December 23rd, represent!), I often see a mix of horror and pity flash across the face of the other person.  This is generally followed by a comment along the lines of, “wow, that must have been hard growing up.”  While having a birthday at this time of the year tends to mean that some things get lumped together, I grew up with the good fortune of having a mother born on the 17th and a grandmother born on the 14th.* Thus, by the time I came along, the expectation was already set in my family that separate gifts were given for birthday and Christmas, and everyone was celebrated individually on their own special days.


A family picture on the day I came home from the hospital – Christmas day!
From left, my great-grandmother, grandmother, and Mom, holding little ole me.

In recent years, Chris and I still celebrate the two occasions independent of one another, but the entire time of gift giving and eating too much has acquired a new name: Birthmas.  For 2014, we lumped all festivities into just one day – the 23rd itself – as we left early the next morning for the airport for some holiday traveling.


A clue as to where we went.  Can you guess?
The blogs on that will come later…

To begin our day properly, we started out with my traditional Christmas breakfast growing up – our family breakfast casserole.  In a nod to being a bit healthier, though, we substituted high fiber, low calorie English muffins for homemade biscuits.  Not as good, that.  While still in our jammies, we opened presents and enjoyed watching the dogs tear circles through the discarded wrapping paper.


Stay away from my llama, maniacs!


In motion...

Kaylee becomes a psycho pants for wrapping paper, Bella enjoys destroying it,
and Harley cowers in the corner, hoping no one notices him.


The very definition of "Crazy Eyes."

After hanging out at home and relaxing for a little while, we headed to lunch,** and then moved along to my appointment to pick up my present to myself this year – another tattoo! 


Here we go!
With my artist, Joey.

Prior to this, I already had one tattoo, on my lower back, in the shape of any osprey, which represents my time growing up and going to college in Florida.  I got it about five years ago, and over the past few years, I’d been thinking about adding to my “ink collection.”***  Since I’m fully aware that these things are permanent, I pondered it for awhile, always coming back to my primary idea of wanting to get something to mark our time living in Arizona.  What I settled on was this:


So, that lizard is a Gila Monster, which are native to this part of the USA, but he’s posed and colored like the Caribbean Soul gecko, which is the icon for Jimmy Buffett’s line of apparel and other related paraphernalia.****


The original Caribbean Soul logo

The only other item I came to the studio with was the idea to include quail somehow, as they’re one of my favorite animals out here.  Can you see them, in profile, in the picture above?  Cute, right? 
That idea plus the ones about the background, the posing of the lizard on the rock, and the gorgeous color scheme were the brainchildren***** of my talented artist, Joey, who works at Sinful Skin Tattoos, in Peoria, on Union Hills and the 101 (in the plaza across from the Wal-Mart).  I was really impressed with the folks at Sinful Skin as well as the shop itself, and I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone I know.  When I went in with my ideas a few months ago, the staff were so helpful and really took the time to look at the photos I brought, recommend a specific artist to me, plan a layout and placement, answer my millions of questions, and so on.  The shop was clean and bright, and they were happy to have Chris sit in on the session with me, to keep me company in case I needed it.  Things are a little on the itchy side right now as the spot heals, but I’m truly happy with the experience and the result.

After my session was done, it was back to the house for birthday dinner.  Figuring we’d already had our high fiber muffins earlier, we were safe to have cheese fondue for the main course, which was delicious. 


Fondue!

Overall, a great day!  Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday!

Later!

Amy

* I also have a cousin on the 15th, a cousin on the other side of the family on the 17th as well, and a great-uncle on the 7th.  There’s a lot to celebrate around this time of the year.

** SmashBurger.  What?  I had a free birthday milkshake and it was delicious.

*** That totally sounds like something a douchebag would say, doesn’t it?  Yeah, it does.

**** Most of you know that I’m a massive Parrothead, but if you didn’t, now you do.

***** Is this the plural of “brainchild?”  I suppose it is now.

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