Happy Birthday to Tricia!!!

I always feel a little bad for people whose birthdays fall either on, or near, a major holiday. I mean, they really get jipped, don’t they? A Birthday is supposed to be the one day of the year that is all about you and to have it overshadowed by another event has to be a bit of a bummer. Especially for those people who love to celebrate their birthdays. My friend, Tricia, is one of those people. Her birthday is December 15th, which is still 10 days before Christmas, but, as a holiday, Christmas is in a league all it’s own… if your birthday even falls somewhere in the month of December, then you are competing with the holiday of holidays. For the past couple of years, our group of friends has ended up combining Tricia’s birthday celebration with our annual Christmas dinner, simply because schedules are booked this time of year and we have to take what we can get. This year we planned far enough in advance and we celebrated her birthday this past Saturday… yes, two weeks ahead of her birthday, but at least it was her night and her night alone.

We went to Bar Louie at Gardenwalk in Anaheim. It’s a relatively new restaurant and it’s located at the back of Gardenwalk, so it seems to get a lot less foot traffic than the more popular Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Changs and Bubba Gumps located at the front the center, so needless to say, there was no wait.

I have to admit that as soon as I opened up the menu, I was regretting that I had a late lunch… there were so many yummy sounding dishes (all horribly bad for you, but yummy none-the-less) I mean, they had pizzas and sliders and burgers and mac & cheese and the list of bad food goes on and on!

And it probably would’ve been really good, had we gotten what we all ordered.  There were so many mix-ups with the food. Food had to be sent back because it was never ordered, there were tomatoes on sandwiches when we ordered no tomatoes, one order didn’t arrive until half way through the meal and I was given tater tots instead of fries (horror or horrors! ). Oddly enough, it actually gave us all a good laugh on several occasions during the meal and I gathered, from everyone, that the food that they did get was pretty good and all in all, we had a great time catching up with one another.

Oliva & Tricia




Me, Tricia & Dana




Dana & Dorell




Seems that most of us thought that clothing was the best gift… I think that Tricia acquired a small wardrobe on Saturday night.




We really had a great time and I definitely don’t get to see some of my favorite people often enough! (and crazy to think that I’ve been friends with them for 9+ years!)