37th Birthday

Some years I'm not interested in celebrating my birthday and then this year, I thought, what the heck, I'm going to roll with it if folks want to make a big deal out of turning 37.

My day started with four little ones wanting to make a REALLY big deal about their mom's birthday. They had no idea how old I was turning, but they sure were excited to show me the HUGE birthday card they had made for me.

I immediately knew that the green prints were Matteo's!

I had seen evidence the day before that the kids had been painting, (the evidence included green paint matted in Matteo's hair) but I assumed they had just decided to raid our art supplies and have some fun.  I had no idea that Celina had helped the kids make hand prints in the shape of a big heart on a homemade birthday card. 

The card wasn't the only surprise.  Celina had a gift for me - my very own selfie stick!  I'm still not certain whether her gift was in seriousness or in jest, but either way, she knows I love to take pictures and I complain I'm rarely in any of them. I've always made fun of my au pair's generation for being obsesses with selfies, but looks like they got the last laugh. 

 St. Paul has a fun little ice skating rink right downtown and I managed to talk some co-workers into a lunchtime skate. 

I capped off my birthday by going out with friends. I wasn't sure what kind of turnout to expect on a snowy, Wednesday night right after the holidays, but it was a nice surprise to see so many friends make it out.  The highlights of the evening included finding out that a good friend of mine is going to be a dad, and being able to celebrate with two others with the same birthday, my good friend Joanna and my sister-in-law, Danielle.  

Birthday triplets!

Since Chris was out of town on my business on my birthday, he took me out for dinner in Minneapolis over the weekend. We left early so we could take a walk around Lake of the Isles, one of my favorite lakes in Minneapolis, and this is where we failed as Minnesotans.  We didn't dress warmly enough!  The air temperature was -1 with a windchill of -9 and when I saw people walking in snow pants, face masks and ski goggles, I knew we were under-dressed. We tried anyway, walked for 10 minutes and gave up.  The ironic part of being out on such a cold day is that the ice rink on the lake and warming house were shut down due to insufficient ice.  We've had a near record-breaking warm winter until now and our lakes have only recently frozen over.  Too cold to walk and no opportunity to ice skate, we retreated to our car and headed instead to dinner where we enjoyed a four-course meal that was, get this, uninterrupted.  That in itself was a wonderful, wonderful birthday gift.