As birthdays go, this year was pretty good. I tend to slip into a hermit mood this time of year and ignore most of the world so I hadn't seen much of anyone for a bit. The last family interaction I had was Chelsi taking me to a chick flick (didn't improve my mood) and then ditching me for the opening of Watchmen (I hope the guilt sears her soul ;)
My mood was much improved with the whole birthday event though. I'm pretty apathetic about it generally, but I do like getting together with everyone. We missed Jarom's family, but had everyone else (not counting the all-male-plus-mom Iowa compound) out to eat mexican at a newer place called Geckos. The food was good, service was quick, and the kids were entertaining. My favorite part of the night was having Avyrlie open my card from my family, taking out the money, and announcing that she was giving it to grandpa. I'm not sure what kind of obedience training goes on when she spend the night down there but apparently they didn't teach me all the tricks!
I put the birthday money to use, after recovering it from my dad, and finally picked up a enameled dutch oven that I've been wanting for a while now. It's fantastic too cook with, is just the right size for soups, chili, curry and the like, and gives Aimee the casserole dish she's said she wanted. My money says she doesn't cook anything in it for at least 3 years ^_^
We also went out for sushi on the actual celebrated day. Ian likes menu items with large price tags and Aimee likes 10 items with small price tags so we don't do sushi too often. We ended up with some fantastic rolls, seafood pasta for Ian, and teri-yuki chicken for Avyrlie. It was a great meal and we all left stuffed.
Last but not least, we had no junk-mail on Monday. In fact we only had one piece of mail and it was a birthday card from my in-laws in Australia. The card has a great shot of the Fairy Penguins that everyone keeps trying to get pictures of. Aimee's shot was pretty good, but doesn't quite do them justice:
Great timing and a great card!
Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes.