Birthday Surprises

I don't really have a great track record for having amazing birthdays. Don't get me wrong, it's always a special day, but things have a tendency to go wrong. For my eighth birthday party, we went to Noble Romans, and all the kids got to go back in the kitchen to put the toppings on our own personal pan pizza. This sounds like great fun, and it was, until the waitress came out with our pizzas and dropped mine on the floor. I got to make another one, but I had to sit and watch everyone else eat while my pizza baked, seemingly an eternity to an eight year old. Then there was my twelfth birthday, when we were snowed in and couldn't have my party until weeks later. All we wanted to do for my birthday last year was eat at Bob Evans, but the Bob Evans we tried to go to either had gone out of business or had never actually existed (stupid Google Maps).

So this year, when I told Nathan that I wanted to have a "surprise evening" and let him plan everything, I didn't really have a lot of expectations, but he did a really good job. When I was almost home from work yesterday, Nathan called me to see if I was home. He didn't want me to go inside until he got there so he could see my reaction.

This is what he had done during his lunch break:

Balloons, pink stargazer lilies, and party blowers!

He had opened up the cards I got in the mail and laid them out too.

And then I unwrapped my crazy gift from Nathan:

A new camera!

I actually wanted a new camera, but one much cheaper than this one! I just wanted an inexpensive camera somewhere in between the camera on my phone and Nathan's huge SLR, but Nathan isn't so good at buying inexpensive cameras. I love it, of course; I'm just not sure that giving an expensive camera to someone who lost one camera and dropped another is such a good idea. 

This is the first picture I took with it. I love my husband, even though he spent way too much money on me.

A better look at my lilies

I didn't know where we were going for dinner. When we got in the car, Nathan informed me that I had to cover my eyes. I could tell he went south and then north again, and then we went in circles. It turns out the circling was just trying to find a parking space. After all that, we ended up at Granite City. We'd never been there, and I thought it looked pretty good.

I ordered the Tuscan shrimp. The dishes I order when we go out to eat are usually things I would never make at home because Nathan wouldn't like them. I think the only thing in this Nathan would eat is the noodles. I really liked it though.

The meat and potatoes man had pork chops and double mashed potatoes.

It was probably one of the best birthdays I'd had, and definitely the best I've had with Nathan.