Birthday Weekend

I set up all these blog posts by *photos only* to get a jump start on posting them, but now it won't let me type at the top :) The first inkling my birthday was near was a box from my sister. Our traditional homemade birthday gifts brought me an official flag football stat hat, complete with Band-Aids! A fine feature. My nephew pretended to try my birthday hat on before it went in the mail. We don't share hats, even with family, so that's why he is just pretending :) Another fun mailbox find!

Okay, now getting ahead of things . . . Buck and the girls surprised me with tickets to see The Nutcracker ballet! I surprised them by having already come up with a plan to do such a girls' night out with my sister-in-law, but we never pursued the tickets (I didn't even know the dates). K was surprised that no one told any of them about her original plan, which then became Buck's plan, which worked out to be a great plan, so everyone was surprised in some way :)
 

After the show, we walked--it was really nice out!--several blocks to a Mexican restaurant in a charming little enclosed alley downtown. We had to wait for Mr. and Mrs. Claus to finish making their dinner reservation ahead of us (pretty wow suits, no less!) We sat out on the veranda of sorts, to enjoy the novelty of eating "outside" in the winter. Random people would walk up and interrupt K's dinner to ask her questions and visit. She said, "Welcome to my life." She also got sprinkled with a full glass of ice water before dinner; it might have been more of an adventure than she expected :) It was really nice to sit and eat and talk with my grown girls and my sister-in-law in a pretty place with good food. A new era of birthday celebrations!

The above is not my picture, but a pretty glimpse of our dining location. It's so nice to see green in the winter, and I love Christmas lights! The downtown area also had a full display going. It was pretty fun to walk back to the parking garage, enjoying the glow. We laughed as the poor horses drawing the sparkling carriages looked embarrassed about their own glowing red noses, fake antlers, and excessive body glitter--"Please, don't take my picture . . ." Ha :)

Getting back to our cars was like an unexpected reverse escape room! Apparently, the parking garage closes at 5 . . . but our passes lasted until 6. The whole place was on lockdown--you couldn't enter anywhere! We knocked on the glass at the theater, and the janitorial staff said that the skybridge access to their theater was closed, too. But, one gal said if we pushed a button on the side door of the main garage, a guy would let us in. So, we tried that. A voice said, "Go to the other side of the building and I'll open the door." We walked down, saw no one, and waited. Eventually, the door did roll open, revealing a near-empty garage. We kind of carefully walked in and looked around, picture nervous laughter, then made it successfully to our cars. Gabby was driving and chose the most likely exit--it didn't open. There was a call box near Caelan, but her door had the child safety locks on it. I was in the process of detangling from my seatbelt, when K's car pulled up in the neighboring escape hatch. Her door opened! Gabby started backing up to catch it before it closed, when our escape hatch opened, too! It was weird. But we were able to follow Aunt K back to town and now have quite an adventure to remember!

In the meantime, Buck and the boys were up north at my family's property, trying to catch some deer. Although they suffered through cold, and relaxed in warm, the deer did not appear. They had a good time, though, watching football in the blind :)