Birthday Festvities Part II

 Aiming to get my thirties off to the right start, I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30 on the morning of my birthday and headed to the gym. When I got home, my husband, the one who normally struggles to get out of bed by 8:30, was beginning birthday breakfast preparations. By the time I was out of the shower, he was plating up French toast and scrambled eggs. It was delicious and the perfect way to start the day.

{Excuse the horrible picture. I only had patience enough for one snap before digging in.}

 Breakfast, however, wasn't my only present of the morning. After clearing the plates (I know! Cooked for and cleaned up after...I could get used to this), Tom handed me a gift bag. After digging through the tissue paper, I pulled out a fancy new 70-300mm lens for my camera!

{Please excuse my crazy, wonky-eyed stare...red-eye correction doesn't always improve a photo.}

At this point, all I wanted to do was go on safari and use my new lens to take all sorts of pictures of distant, unsuspecting creatures. Sadly, I had to go to school, and for some reason, the administration frowns on teachers lurking in the shadows and taking pictures of the students with a telephoto lens. So I went off to school where a student from last year popped into my classroom to wish me a happy birthday. How she remembered, I have no idea, but it was a lovely surprise. My first class sang me happy birthday, flowers arrived at lunch from Husband of the Year, and my normally rowdy last class of the day took it easy on me because news of my birthday had apparently made the rounds. All in all, I didn't half mind working on my birthday.

{Getting flowers at work is the best.}

After school, I went home to prepare for dinner at an undisclosed location. And by prepare, I mean I painted my nails while watching Oprah. Tom arrived an hour or so after me with yet more flowers (calla lilies this time) and a bottle of the same bottle that he brought with him the first time he came to visit me five years ago. I'm tell you, this guy is good.

Just as we were about to head out the door for dinner, Tom finally revealed our destination - Bertrand at Mr. A's. I had been wanting to go there forever, so I was incredibly excited! Mr. A's is one of those fancy pants restaurants that always makes the list of San Diego's best fine dining establishments, so we definitely needed an excuse to make a visit. Turns out that turning thirty is as good an excuse as any.

{Pre-dinner Champagne toast at the bar.}

Before ordering (but after opening the wine, naturally), Tom presented me with yet another thoughtful gift. After what must have been hours of combing through the thousands (?) of pictures that I've taken over the last year, he put together a sixty-plus page book of a representative sample. It was the perfect gift. Knowing me as he does, he figured that I would want to have an album to commemorate the (attempt at) a year of daily photos but that I would procrastinate and put it off until it no longer seemed worth the effort...sad, but true. It was really fun to go through the book and recall the day that I took each picture. The pages of the book are organized by theme and are also a great reminder of some of the things on checked off of my list over the last year.

As if the book hadn't made me weepy enough, Tom had also thrown all of the birthday cards I had been waiting to open into the gift bag on our way out the door. As I opened the cards and read the incredibly sweet and thoughtful words of my closest friends, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with gratitude for the amazing women who I am fortunate enough to call my friends. 

Dinner was long and lovely. We had an appetizer of grilled prawns and king crab legs over an avocado and papaya carpaccio. I told you - fancy pants. Then I had a butternut squash and scallop risotto and Tom had rack of lamb. After dinner we lingered over an extra glass of wine and a Happy Birthday dessert plate.

{Sorry for another lousy picture - I was trying not to embarrass myself too much by setting off my flash in the middle of the fancy restaurant.}

Before calling it a night, we went out to the patio to enjoy Mr. A's famous views.

I couldn't have asked for a better kick-off to my third decade. Once you turn thirty, every night is like this, right?