the big 3-0

Yep, he hit the mark! Andrew turns 30 tomorrow! We'll actually be heading to South Carolina to work with our ministry's summer project, so it will be harder to celebrate it then. And did I mention we're getting picked up at 4:45 am? Whew! So instead we settled for celebrating a few days early.

I couldn't wait for his birthday and I was so excited about celebrating my best friend! I made him his favorite breakfast- monkey bread! Here's the recipe from Pillsbury (the Pioneer Woman also has one but I haven't tried it yet) and I did a half recipe in a loaf pan. SO good but quite sugary even for me!

I had a few mylar balloons waiting for him and a couple of "Happy Birthday" banners hung around the house. I went to the discount bookstore and picked up a great book with tons of hiking trails all over Minnesota and a mini book with everything you'd ever want to know about hiking and camping. I picked out a couple of trails for Andrew to choose from and after reading a little more, he settled on William O'Brien State Park. It's about 45 north east of us and right near the Minnesota/Wisconsin border. Here are some pics from the day hike we took:

The birthday boy himself!
A beaver dam Andrew spotted and got a shot of:
We crossed these fun train tracks...Isn't he the cutest hiker you've ever seen?!
this awesome tunnel we walked under- so picturesque!

The prarie grasslands of the park:
One of the beautiful marshes with tons of little lily pads:After the 6 mile hike we stopped by our nearby favorite small town: Stillwater, MN. It's SO cute! We had lunch there at a place Andrew took me around 2 years ago while we were dating.

We had to get some errands done and knock out a few things on our check list and then we headed to Andrew's favorite restaurant for dinner: Buca di Beppo. We headed over to the one in St. Paul and hubs was drooling when the double chocolate cake we delivered to him!

Speaking of chocolate, last year when Andrew and I visited Charleston we stopped at a cute little bakery called Baked. Hubs was being sweet and let me fulfill my unquenchable sweet tooth. Really though, he got the reward- "the best brownie ever." So I went online and ordered a few of the "sweet and salty" brownie that he swooned over. This is what it looked like:


I loved getting to make my husband smile! I really enjoy getting to make him happy and celebrate such a sweet gift in my life!