Nik's birthday is Feb 25 and mine is March 5 so every year we celebrate Birthday Week all the days in between. Now that we have a small child those days tend to not be different than the rest of the year but the sentiment is there and it provides the perfect excuse to eat special meals and at random intervals, shout, "Birthday Week! Whoohoo!"
It's also part of it that the birthdays of 3 aunts, a brother-in-law and my dad fall in that time and a niece and my brother in the following couple days. Bunch of fishy lot we are! (And this doesn't even count friends!)
For Nik's celebration, we had ladybug cake at home with Nik's dad and little brother Jori. (Hopper chose the cake of course, no surprise there, it was eye height for him at the nice bakery and he pointed at it immediately.) For mine we went to get Japanese at one of our favorite spots, the proverbial icing was that they had avocado ice cream! It has been a dream of mine for years and it lived up to my hype, a little tropical, a little nutty, and all sorts of creamy. Heaven!
But the real gift was a special surprise party. I thought I was organizing a party for the Saturday but Nik, the cheeky sneaky man, organized my lovely friends on the Friday to gather at a restaurant under the pretense that we were dining with besties Ralph and Jo to belatedly celebrate his day. At one point the jig was nearly up and the suspicion reached heart-aching levels (I had an outfit planned!), but truth be told, I fell for the dumbest trick in the book. Ralph said he wanted to show us a "submarine" bar kitted with round windows and fish tank. My friends jumped and shouted and I nearly missed the whole thing for how hard I was looking for the portal windows. I shook for about 20 mins and dear sweet Nik brought my dancing outfit.
So I had super tasty food, amazingly generous presents, and got to dance with my friends which was all I really wanted. 40 ain't so bad when you realize you've perfected the art of making amazing friends to surround yourself with.
