It's my birfday!!

For my birthday, I got lucky and Ben bought tickets for us to spend time with these little guys! They are African penguins and I was thrilled to spend some time with my favorite arctic animal.

Family picture! I wanted to take her home so bad. Her name was Paula, as in Simon, Paula and Randy.

They just gather around your feet and let you pet them as much as you want! All of them were hand raised, so their keepers said that they just think of us as big penguins. They are so, so soft, thanks to all of those feathers. The only exception is their wings. Those are more leathery, to help propel them through the water.

This little lady loved Ben. She kept coming up to him and just staring at him, trying to get him to pet her.

Here they are! I seriously could have taken one home with me.. until I learned that they go to the bathroom every twenty minutes. Gross. BUT only because they eat up to 40 big fish each day - pretty much their entire weight in fish. That's a lot of food! They are responsible for eating more food than any other group at the aquarium, including the sharks.

After we left the aquarium, we went over to Tom + Chee, a restaurant that specializes in only grilled cheese and tomato soup. It was incredible. I had the turkey and pesto grilled cheese, which I could totally go for right now.

We went by the Kenwood mall on the way home, where I picked up a couple of new MAC eye shadows, some supplies from the Container Store, and my birthday gift from Sephora. We came across this window decal in the parking lot and it's the perfect way to describe my driving.

It was the perfect birthday! We came home, ate lots of junk food and spent Sunday with some of our closest friends. I love birthday weekends.