I'm 55!

I finally made it to the big double nickle. Gina asked what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday this year and I said I wanted a trip to the casinos. Mom joined us as did our friend Annie. The week before Annie had brought me a cake and took me out to eat & to a movie!

First stop was L'Auberge where Mom & I had a free room offer. Gina & I were on the 16th floor with a beautiful view of Lake Charles and Annie shared Mom's room up on the 17th floor. Had a nice buffet lunch on Saturday, and a birthday breakfast on Sunday. Then Gina & Annie went back home while Mom & I went on to Coushatta.

Everyone who had a birthday in January was eligible to be in a 'cash frenzy' contest from 2-4PM. They called a lucky person's name every 30 minutes to come stand in this glass box and they had $5000 in cash blowing around inside. As much as you could catch and put into a box in just 60 seconds you got to keep.

I was playing roulette when I heard Mom's name called. I literally threw my chips at the croupier and screamed "I need to cash in and find my mom!" I then called her on the phone and it was hilarious trying to find her since she had no idea where she was in the casino. "I'm standing next to a slot machine" was not much help since they have 100,000 slots there! But we finally found one another and I grabbed her arm and ran with her all the way to the glass box. The contestant only had 10 minutes to show up before they'd call out another lucky winner's name. We got there just as they were making the 'last call for Mildred Root' announcement.

Mom did great and grabbed $480! Everyone was cheering her on "Go Granny!" and the emcee said she hoped she was as spry as Mom when she was 86 years old! It was soooo much fun! They should have a photo of Mom up on the Coushatta website soon. I sure wish Gina had been with us with her iPhone to get a video of Mom in that glass box.

Mom & I soon left with her riches to our final destination, Delta Downs casino where we each had a free room offer as well. Mom came home with nearly twice as much as she had taken to gamble with and I came home with not a penny -- but I had a great time.

In addition to all this fun, I got a funny Mr. Rogers birthday card from Denise along with a gift card to amazon. Still haven't figured out what I'll get with that... and an e-mail announcement from Lori that I have some delicious Harry & David pears on the way. If you've never had some of these, you MUST try them. Gina got me a Buzz Lightyear nightlight that complements my bathroom decor wonderfully AND gives me just enough light for those wee hour of the morning trips to the toilet :-)

I also got a wonderful t-shirt from Shari that has a game from The Big Bang Theory on it. Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. If you don't get it, click here. HILARIOUS! And Mom got me the sweetest birthday card ever and in it was $15 and instructions to get scratchoffs. I did as instructed, but none of them paid off :-(

Today when I returned to work, I was surprised by my coworkers having decorated my door.


Here's a close-up of that Enterprise wishing me a Happy Birthday!



My coworkers, along with the pretty balloons and flowers that decorated the cake table.



And a HUMONGOUS cake and punch that was absolutely delicious. Unfortunately I didn't start taking photos until the whole building had been alerted about free cake in our office...


Such a nice way to be celebrated :-)