Birthday

My birthday was a few weeks ago and although Mike and I were originally planning on going out to eat that night, those plans fell through. (Mike actually had to go to the MD/PhD graduation and they wouldn't let him get out of it...still a little bitter about that). So instead we Mike took me to a fabulous lunch at a Thai restaurant downtown called the King and I. It was delicious!

Mike also gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift: a piano. A piano? Yes a piano. However, it was one that he got for free off of craigslist. When he and some other guys from the ward brought it home I almost told them to take it back. However Mike cleaned it up, bleached the keys and then for my birthday/mother's day present got it tuned. He actually tried tuning himself, but then realized it was a bit above his capabilities. It has been so fun to have a piano in our home! Although I'm sure our neighbors are wishing we didn't have it... :)

The above picture is what the piano looked like when they hauled it in. Notice there's several keys that were sticking, a pedal missing and the keys were brown. Thankfully Mike is a great fix it guy, and he was able to fix the notes that stuck and actually found the pedal that had been thrown inside the piano, so he fixed that too.

Here you can see the keys on the bottom haven't been cleaned, and the keys on the top have been through one cleaning. Mike actually bleached them several times, so they look great now!

Here's a picture of Mike playing the piano with Esther on his lap. Esther loves music and will sit forever if we're playing the piano. We recently got a bumbo, which should make this whole process a little easier. :)

Anyways, since Mike was going to be gone, I didn't want to spend the day by myself, so I invited my girlfriends over for a 3C's party that night.

Chocolate...
Cheesecake...
and a Chick-flick. :)

Of course we had to watch this classic. :) I'm pretty sure I've had this entire movie memorized since I was ten. I tend to store away random movie trivia in my little brain, so here's a few tidbits about this movie. Audrey Hepburn actually doesn't do much of the singing in the movie. She's a fabulous actress, but only so-so when it comes to singing. She worked so hard to try to get her singing up to par for the movie, but in the end the director decided to have her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon. She didn't know about it until the preview of the movie. Sad. The actor who played Freddie also had his singing dubbed in the movie.

The directors of the movie did not want this movie to be a film version of the Broadway production, so they originally did not want anyone from the Broadway cast to be in it. This is why Audrey Hepburn was chosen instead of Julie Andrews, who starred as Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway version. Elizabeth Taylor lobbied long and hard for the part of Eliza, but was considered too sultry. The directors wanted a more wholesome Eliza. After Cary Grant and Peter O'Toole turned down the part of Henry Higgins, the directors settled for Rex Harrison, who had created the part on Broadway. They also had to settle for another actor from the Broadway production, Stanley Holloway, who played Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father. Can you imagine this movie without these dymanic actors?!

America, and Hollywood in particular, were up in arms that the directors had snubbed Julie Andrews and not cast her in the role of Eliza. Since Julie Andrews was unable to do the film My Fair Lady, she was instead cast in a delightful little film called Mary Poppins.

Anyways, back to my birthday. I had so much fun having my girlfriend's over, watching a favorite movie, and stuffing myself with incredibly yummy treats. Thanks for sharing my birthday with me ladies!