The best 27th birthday ever!

My 27th birthday was one of the most fantastic days I've had in a very long time, with great thanks to my husband and family & friends. So fantastic in fact, that I can't help but write it down. Who knows if anyone wants to read it all, but it was special to me and this is our blog...and isn't this where I'm supposed to write about the exciting and not-so exciting details of our life and assume others want to know all about it? So here goes!

The day began unusually with me waking up on my own and not to the sound of Asher's hungry whimpering. It was 6:00 a.m. and the boy was still sleeping, which meant that I'd just had my first solid night of sleep in what feels like a LONG time. All in all, he slept 11 hours that night. Such a nice birthday treat for his mama. I had even told Asher the night before that for my birthday I'd like him to sleep through the night. Let's hope he continues to listen well :).

I was up too early for Rick and instructed to head back to bed until he called for me. A little after 7:00 I was beckoned back downstairs to a beautiful breakfast of goat cheese & artichoke omelets, fruit skewers with yogurt (and sprinkled with cinnamon for presentation), and MIMOSAS!! I have been wanting a mimosa for such a long, long time that it was truly a highlight to the day (is that sad?). The table was complete with flowers and birthday cards from Rick, my mother & father-in-law and Asher. My first note from Asher and it almost brought tears to my eyes.

As the day went on I received text messages from Rick with clues for finding notes he had left me throughout the house -six in all. They were in places that spoke of the things he appreciates and loves about me - my cooking, desire to learn and love for reading, my mothering of Asher, my recycling habit, etc. One of things I love most about Rick is that he truly takes the time to speak in my "love language." Who knows when he found the time to come up with all of these sweet messages, write them out on cute little cards and tie them up with ribbons and hide them around the house...but he did and he knows how important those encouraging words are to me. I could end the whole story here, knowing that I'm deeply loved by this man, but there was still more to come!!

Phone calls from my family and friends came throughout the day - can you picture me speaking in German to my Oma while trying to buy some Christmas items at Michael's? For lunch, I joined my friend Sheri from our birthing class, who made an extra special effort to prepare me my self-declared favorite lunch - turkey sandwiches, complete with vegetable soup and birthday cake too.

Asher and I made it back home just in time to clean up the house a bit and get dinner ready for Miss Judi, our friend and neighbor who volunteered to babysit so Rick and I could have a night out alone. Dinner was a surprise as well, but I had a general idea of where we were headed. Now, when Rick and I head to Cincinnati, we almost always stop at Trader Joe's. It's the closest one to us at a 45 minute drive, and one of my favorite places to shop (I love food and it reminds me of home, so there you go!). So as we're passing through Kenwood and I see Trader Joe's, imagine my surprise Rick makes a quick turn into their parking lot. "Since I know how happy it makes you, we're going to stop and you get to pick out one item you'd like...anything at all." How well my husband knows me :). I kept ranting about how this was such a hard decision, but ended up with a small box of ginger cookies in hand, their multi-grain pancake mix, and a couple bottles of three-buck-chuck. My excitement at this point was overflowing, and I couldn't help but let the man at the counter know it was my birthday and why my husband had brought me here (you probably think I'm crazy at this point). The man says to me,"Is there anything else you'd like for your birthday." "Um, that bag," I said, motioning to the brown paper bag. "And those truffles." "Sure thing, take one and one for the road," he says, without hesitation.

Now with chocolate in the belly, we continued our journey to the mystery dinner spot - Ferrari's, a sweet little Italian place with its own bakery. And this too, was something I was secretly hoping for. We had a delicious dinner, a nice glass of merlot, and good conversation. What more could you ask for? Our waitress came to us as we were finishing and declared, "I'm going to bring the dessert menu because someone called in and decided you each needed dessert." Oh, my wonderful mother and father-in-law. They know me and my sweet tooth all too well.

So with a very happy belly and an even happier heart, we returned home to a sleeping baby and Judi's smiling face. Thank you all for making this such a special and love-filled day!

(I realize now that this is the longest post I've ever written, and its all about my birthday. But when you wake up at 5:00 a.m. and everyone else is asleep and you've just had a day where you feel loved inside and out, how can you not want to relive every moment. And if you have made it this far in the blog and are wishing I had spared you some details for sake of brevity, all I can say is that the editor in me doesn't wake up until at least 6:30 a.m. :)