Birthday

Last weekend (the weekend before my birthday), my family had a surprise party for me here at the farm. This past weekend, Bobby and I went to Pittsburgh. We did a little shopping downtown Saturday afternoon, then drove through some not-so-good neighborhoods to find Trader Joe's where I stocked up on a few bags of my favorite pretzel thins, had dinner at Church Brew Works - cool place!. I had a nice Pittsburgh-style salad (which means there were fries on it) and Bobby ate chicken & crawfish etoufee.





































We then drove to the North Hills to go to Target to get Bobby a Troy Polamalu jersey, and then ended up at the condo downtown to sleep. Sunday morning we woke up early and walked all the way over to Station Square to have the world famous brunch at the Grand Concourse. It was amazing. A few items on the brunch include: prime rib, smoked salmon, shrimp, homemade donuts, made-to-order omelets, Belgian waffles, and bananas foster! Then we hopped on the Gateway Clipper boat to be shuttled over to Heinz Field for the Steelers game.

The boat was full of black & gold.



















Stiller fans unloading.




















We took a gamble here and lost unfortunately. We didn't have any tickets and were planning on getting them from scalpers. What we weren't prepared for were the outrageous prices they were asking. We had what we thought was a lot of cash on us (mostly birthday money) but it turned out that we barely had enough for ONE ticket!! They were asking over 4 times the face-value price of the tickets. And we just couldn't do it... Even if we had that much cash on us, we couldn't spend it all on tickets. Even though I really wanted to go to that game. It was Browns vs Steelers! One of the greatest football rivalries ever. And we were right there, standing outside the stadium. So, sadly we had to walk back to the condo and watch the game on tv, while we could see Heinz Field out the window. It was painful, but we still enjoyed it. Whew, it was a close one! But fortunately the Steelers pulled it out at the end and won a good one for me.

This is where I wanted to be!




















But... rather than watching it from inside the stadium (in the rain) we saw it from this comfy couch.



















We left the city as soon as the game was over and got back in time for youth group. Where they had a little birthday cake for me and sang happy birthday.