Happy Birthday, Wife!

A month ago we celebrated The Wife's, erm, 21st-ish* birthday.  I did my very best to spoil her , especially after she made my own birthday so very exciting this year (if I may, I did quite deliver in the presents and surprises-throughout-the-day departments this year!).  She has blogged about it all herself on her blog, but I wanted to show some love on here too.

The festivities started with a delightful dinner, and Bombay House won the birthday girl's vote this year.  We have been more or less loving Indian food lately (probably ever since we so enjoyed having it for our anniversary in Windermere last summer), and although we always think it might be a little overpriced here, it was so delicious.

This is the before picture.  To the right are a couple of the birthday surprises -- A beloved Brontë book set!

This is the after.  NBD.

And then we headed over to the theater to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  Anyone who knows The Wife knows that she's a huge and avid fan of the movies (yes, even the second and third one, ha ha), and although she was hesitant about the direction the fourth seemed to be going, she was pretty excited it came out on her birthday.  Likewise, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a very big fan of the movies, but we watched them all in preparation for the new one, and I liked them a little better.  I think it has to do with the company with which you watch them.  Anyway, it was time for the big movie event, and we even sat in line for a few minutes:

Sorry, sweetie, no Will in this one.  At least your socks can represent.

Unfortunately it wasn't a huge hit with her, but we're thinking that she might warm to it a little more after another viewing.  I don't want to write a lengthy review, but in brief I will say:  Too much Jack acting self-aware that he was Jack, if you know what I mean, no chemistry between Jack and Angelica, Blackbeard wasn't nearly threatening enough, some of the music cues were ripped directly from the previous scores, the mythology was glossed over and the side stories seemed really irrelevant.  And then of course the multiple shameless loose ends and openings for sequel opportunities seemed kind of contrived and opportunistic.  So yes, maybe we'll like it a little better the second time around, ha ha.

A few days later we met with a bunch of kith and kin to have our biannual trip to Tucanos to make use of their two-for-one birthday coupon.  We sometimes wish there were a few more months in between our birthdays so we could spread out our Tucanos visits, but we always love it there.

So cute.

I know Leland looks kind of, um, vacant here, but Lacie makes up for it, yes?

We had three birthday girls in our group...

...So of course the wait staff had to come sing to them!

They didn't have a problem getting into the spirit of things.

They totally didn't bring a treat when we went for my birthday in March, but they made up for it this time.

It was a great time, and it was sad that Elise was Single Rider this time around, but Jeff was there in spirit, as he will probably always be when we eat at Tucanos.

Later that day we met up to eventually create the epic video recently posted (you can see it here).  Julie had wanted to make her own birthday cake.  I promise I offered to make it for her, but she really wanted to try her hand at Red Velvet Cake.  In her post she outlines how it didn't quite work out as planned, and though I had no problem eating it anyway, it did make a quite scrumptious trifle:

So after we made our amazing music video, since we hadn't brought a birthday cake as planned, our friends insisted that we had to have some kind of celebration anyway.  After all, Julie deserved a birthday cake at this sort-of-birthday party, right?  So off to Walmart we went, and after looking at a few options, the chocolate mousse cake was the one that had to be the obvious choice.

For the record, she tried the Red Velvet Cake again last week and it was picture perfect:

I also had (am still having) no problem eating this one. :D

Happy birthday, Wife!  I hope I made it magical and splendid!

* She really turned 28.  Own it, Wife!  28 was a great year for me!