Birthday Fun

Michael is a pretty good frisbee player, code writer, cat trainer, boardgamer, knitter, and miniature painter. He's perhaps most talented at planning birthdays, though. He is somehow able to produce professional quality projects, whereas when I make things they look crafty and homemade. 

He surprised me by taking the day off work on my birthday and planning a full day of fun activities, with some relaxing moments in between. It was kind of like being on vacation in our own city for a day, and most importantly, he had booked a carshare for the day in order to chauffeur my pregnant self around. We kicked it off with breakfast sandwiches, there were a few clues and puzzles to solve that he devised in order for me to acquire/plan the day's schedule, yoga, boardgaming, a foot massage, lunch with a friend and her mom and bub, time to read on the beach, my first ever birthday swim in one of the oceanside pools (the waves weren't safe to swim in, and when you're born in February in the northern hemisphere, you never get to have a pool party), a short nap, delicious dinner at Pony on the Rocks, walking around Circular Quay for the Chinese New Year lantern festival, gelato from Messina, and we finished it off with a movie at home. It was a full schedule, but every activity was enjoyable in my current state. I've been lucky to have some pretty spectacular birthdays in the last several years, whether they were personalized clue scavenger hunts from Michael, hiking in Taiwan, ski trips, or special weekends with out-of-town friends. My "last birthday where I matter" as Michael jokingly calls it (meaning the last one where I am not a mom yet and have to always worry about someone else), was better than I thought it would be, and was really just as perfect as it could have been in the absence of some of my friends and family from home. So far, I have no complaints about 35.