A Birthday For Me!

October 5th. The most popular day of the year for babies to be born. Did you know that? I must share my birthday with so many people. I only know of two people my entire 28 years of existence that shared my birthday. Not sure how that is possible. I suppose regardless of how popular the day is, it still marks a day in history that I arrived and amazingly enough, we celebrate that day. :)

Birthdays are great. I don't remember tons of parties growing up but I enjoy them now. I so far have not had any trouble with the thoughts of growing older as each year brings new experiences, and adventures and that is always a good thing. Right?

This particular year I got to celebrate more than one day even. October 5th came twice this year. A miracle! Ok, not really . I got to celebrate it in two time zones so once in India and the other in the Pacific time zone. That is pretty exciting. In India birthdays are a little different. It is tradition and very widely practiced that on your birthday you give gifts to your friends and if you go to eat with friends YOU pay for the meal. Isn't that funny? I found that very interesting.

The day itself was an ordinary day. In all truthfulness I had been quite sick so the day was not filled with bustling activities as I did not feel well enough and could hardly move. Feeling a little more rested and drugged Miles took me out that evening to one of our favorite restaurants. Azulia. Mediterranean food. YUM! I had garlic chicken kabobs and a brown rice and grilled vegetables. We especially love the tiramisu dessert you might remember from Miles birthday post. Well, they were out of the tiramisu so we had a brownie and ice cream instead. It was a huge disappointment for sure. But still a lovely dinner with my husband.

The following day I was doing better. I got up early and even put on my new birthday dress Miles had bought me i had been saving until my actual birthday. ( more on the dress later. ) My fabulous Mother in law bought me a muffins tin that fits in my toaster oven and muffin and cake mixes for my birthday so I was pretty excited!!! I mixed up the blueberry muffin mix as fast as I could. I could barely stand it as the entire house filled with the intoxicating aroma of blueberry muffins! They were absolutely perfect! We devoured most of them but Miles reserved one and insisted we light a candle. It was the best birthday breakfast dessert I could have asked for. Take that tiramisu!

The day got better and better too. Wednesday is my typical meet up with Ann day. Our weekly tradition is that I usually pick her up from Sparkys in the afternoon and we get to visit and go to Gloria Jeans for coffee inside Express Avenue. EA is a brand new swanky mall that has all sorts of Western (USA) brand stores and expensive Italian leather goods. Today we decided to go for ice cream and invited some other Friends. There is a whole bunch of IJM (International Justice Mission) interns that we have met. They work above Sparkys and we go all go to the same church. A few of these interns met Ann and I for ice cream at Sandy's Chocolate Laboratory. We ordered the OMG dessert. It lives up to its name as we said OH MY GOSH as soon as we saw it!

It is a layered style dessert that came in a huge planter- complete with chocolate cake, brownie, choc chip cookies, chocolate ice cream, and about 8 inches of whip cream on the top. Delightfully delicious! It even had a firework inside. That is one thing that India has gotten right. Fireworks! They are apart of every celebration here. My birthday dessert with the ladies from IJM and my friend Ann was no different!

Well
I wish I was fast enough to capture the picture with me next to it...but I think you get the idea....

It was a great birthday all in all. And being able to celebrate it here -twice- priceless!

So keep away thoughts of wrinkles, gray hairs and life not filled to the brink of overflow... I am here,and right now enjoying the minutes, soaking in that now, drinking in this place, and overflowing....so to another year and more adventures ahead....bring it!!!!