The Celebration

Sorry for the delay on this post. I loaded up the pictures the first night, but was too tired to write anything and it just got put off. So here it is.

Today(actually yesterday, as it's after midnight), Mike and I decided to go out and celebrate Matt's birthday. It had snowed really hard the night before (and we know for sure because we were driving in it!). The next morning, everything was buried...the cars on our street.

The parking lot...

And, to a lesser extent, our car. Mike let me clear off the car - apparently I do a much neater and more careful job than he does. Afterwards, I thew snowballs at him and we ended up playing snow-baseball with Mike up to bat with our ice scraper. He kept complaining that I wasn't pitching into his "wheelhouse" - which seems to be his new favorite word, as he has used it copiously the last few days to describe a few different things.

Then we went out to lunch. It was a place we'd never been before.

Mike had a BLT...

While I stuck with the eggs, bacon and french toast. Looks good right? Well, I ate about half my eggs (as you can see I've already eaten a bunch of them in this picture) when I found middle of the whole other half hadn't been stirred much before being cooked and was all gooey and gross. Yuck. Then the bacon was all rubbery. I could have fixed that if our server had ever come back to our table. All it needed was a little microwave time. My hash browns were stone cold. There was nothing technically wrong with the french toast...they just weren't that great. Apparently I am turning into my mother - she always got bad food at restaurants and it seems I've inherited this curse.

After lunch, we hopped on the red line at Bryn Mawr for a trip downtown. where we stopped at my favorite place! The downtown library. Joy. Pure joy.

When the library closed at 5, we decided to walk up to Millennium Park. On the way, in Grant Park, I saw this snow angel someone had done in the midst of an otherwise pristine blanket of snow across one section of the park. I had to take a picture of it, even though Mike made fun of me. I thought it was cool!

Then we get to the part that Mike had been looking forward to all day. Ice skating at Millennium Park. Mike went to rent skates and came back right away. Turns out that the people I had assumed were just milling around on the far side of the ice...were in line for skates. The line was roughly 20-30 minutes long. Mike was really disappointed and vowed not to come back downtown to ice skate until after he has bought his own skates. Anyway, there's a smaller park with ice skating nearby our house - so I suspect we will be skating there soon.

Then we went out for dinner. Mike took me to The Outback for a bloomin' onion. The plan had been to eat something for dinner and then get a piece of cake in honor of Matt's birthday and eat it for him. You know what? Outback = no cake! I was appalled. I have vowed to write them a sternly worded letter about their cake-less-ness. I was disappointed, but took it in stride and asked Mike if he was ready to go home. He says, "Well, we gotta do something...it's Matt's birthday!" I mean, really...is there any doubt why I love this man? So, as Tim Gunn says, we made it work. We went to Baskin Robbins.

Matt's birthday bounty...I think he would have been pleased.


Mike with Matt's birthday Oreo sundae...

A close up of Matt's half-eaten birthday Oreo sundae...

...and muffiny goodness for the next morning! Yummo.


Happy Birthday, Matt!