i do not like to move it, move it

Happy 2024 everyone! This New Years was a lot less exciting than most new years, but we are in need of a little chill time, and I am not gonna lie, it's getting harder and harder to stay awake that late every year. Mike was closing at SeaWorld at 2am, so we did not even get to ring in the new year in person together. I treated myself to a Sonic date, where I stuffed my face with the most delicious cheesecake milkshake and watched early fireworks from the parking lot.

At midnight, I watched the ball drop in Times Square on one screen, while I facetimed with Mike on the other, watching through the terrible phone reception of SeaWorlds fireworks. 

I also got a second midnight kiss from Mimi the puppers, which wasn't all that bad.

This is what you see as they come flying toward you...

SOME yoga was done, but it was hard to do deep breathing with monkey sounds running all around you, haha.

We had little fruits to feed the lemurs, and had to hide them under our yoga mats to spread out our time with them, but the cheeky lemurs knew to look under the mats.

On my actual birth day, Mike and I were both lucky to be off work, so we spent the day together. We went on a little walk and got some free donuts from Shipley Do-Nuts.

In the afternoon, we had a fun little birthday party, complete with presents and yellow funfetti cake. 

I went and got some pinky sparkly toes and a spa pedicure. The pedi place was called Amy's Nail Salon, which I went to thinking of my best friend, and perfect timing, the girl herself called me right as I walked in. So I feel like I basically got a pedicure with Amy on my birthday.

For dinner, Mike and I had a fun dinner at Melting Pot fondue restaurant! 

First, you start with a cheese appetizer, picking which type you'd like. We went for the Alpine classic and it was delicious. We dipped carrots, different types of breads, celery, cauliflower, and green apples in the cheese. 

Next came the salads, where you had a couple options. The candied pecans on my strawberry salad were the best part!

The mains, you choose your collection of entree and how the table would like it cooked. I choose the veggie options and Mike chose your standard chicken, pork, steak, shrimp concoction, and we choose instead of the hot pot route to grill our items. They came with an array of sauces, which were so tasty!

And the final dessert of the evening was your choice of chocolate fondue. We had the white and milk chocolate option, which sort of just melted into milk chocolate. It comes with strawberries, bananas, rice krispy bars, marshmallows, cookie covered marshmallows, brownies, brookies, pound cake, and the best was the belgian waffle. 

We had a really great time, and I felt super special getting to spend my birthday doing something adventurous with food!

The day after my birthday, the festivities continued as we met up with Holli and Justin to go to Universal Studios for the day. 

I dawned my birthday button as we played through Wizarding World of Harry Potter, destroyed some villains at villain con, oo-ed and awed at the Borne Stunt Show, and all around, made some core memories. 

Somehow, after a full day of Universal Studios, we ended up eating dinner at Disney Springs, so naturally, there was a birthday button switch.

We have been so lucky to have these guys around, I am really going to miss them when they go.

One of the best parts about living in Orlando is all the connections around the world we have made, and usually at some point or another, most of these people end up in Orlando at some point! Allison and I worked together in HK (shocking I know), and Holli and Allison knew each other from Disney World days! It was so nice catching up with my fish-ters and reconnecting. We went to a really amazing Indian restaurant called Bombay Street Kitchen, and I will definitely be back!

We also met up with Madi who I went to college with who has recently moved to Orlando with her husband. We got Chinese food at KungFu Kitchen, which was honestly so surprisingly delicious!

I have a very exciting trip coming up at the end of the month I am excited to tell you about, but looks like you're going to have to wait til the next blog post for this one....

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