Marty asked me many, many times what I wanted for my birthday and how I wanted to celebrate. Travel is always, by far, the first thing on my list for gifts or ways to celebrate. Not only is travel awesome - especially being so close
and convenient to so many cool places here -but also I'm not much of a material things type person. I would take a trip nearly anywhere over a physical gift. So, our trip to Turkey in October was the first of my gifts and our
upcoming trip to Mallorca was the second part. I told Marty I just want to be in Spain. I don't care which city or what part but Spain. He found an amazing deal to Mallorca because it is low season so off to the Island of Mallorca on Wednesday for more celebrating. When you turn 50 the celebration can last for the week, right? Maybe the month or even the year. Actually, I'm hoping to take a trip of some kind every
month to help me celebrate my birthday. I think when you turn fifty you can do stuff like that, am I right? 😄
So, if I'm keeping track Stockholm in September, Turkey in October, Mallorca in November.... I was supposed to go to Coppenhagen to spend the weekend with Simone but now Marty has to go back to Seattle the same weekend we had planned 😞 But we may go to Krakow the week after Christmas so that counts for December and I already have a trip booked to meet up with my friend Ali in Sevilla in January... that's 5 months right there!!
On the morning of my birthday I woke up to a big surprise. It was a Sunday and Josie has spent the night at her friend, Aurora's house because she had an all day Odyssey of the Mind tournament on Saturday and Marty and I had a big Friendsgiving party to go to Saturday night. Benjamin also was not here as he had spent the night with his best buddy, Clayton. Marty and I got home pretty late (for us anyway) and I woke up around 7am to the sound of light whispering. I knew no one was home except Marty so this was strange. When I walked out of the bedroom Josie and Marty yelled surprise and led me into the kitchen which was fully decorated with balloons, party hats, beautiful orange
(my favorite color) roses, some chocolate mints (my favorite candy) cards from my parents and from Marty and the kids. Acactus plant (I'm not so good with keeping plants alive here) They were so proud of themselves. I was so shocked to see Josie. I knew she had spent the night at her friend's house and could not figure out how she got home so early. Apparently she and Marty made the plan that she would be home by 5:45AM!!!! Her friend lives just a 5 minute bike ride away but still that early in the morning it is still pitch dark and it was SOOO cold that morning. Wow!! I was really touched that they would both get up so early to decorate and surprise me.
I told Marty that I wanted to walk to the lake with him and around it by myself. It was cold but sunny - my favorite type of winter weather. So Marty and I took off to walk to the lake. It's about a half hour walk to the lake and so when we got there Marty headed home to go pick up Benjamin from Clayton's house and I continued on and around the lake - about a 3.5 mile walk. It was beautiful and I was able to reflect on my life and how great it really is. I get so bogged down in the day to day that I often - or at least not often enough- reflect on just how good I've got it.
After finishing up around the lake I still had a 30 minute walk home. But again, it was bright and sunny and walking was exactly what I wanted to do on my birthday.
Later that afternoon we went to a pretty authentic (as authentic as we have had here in Berlin) Mexican place. I wanted a good margarita and I got one. The gaucamole was great as was the salsa. Everyone was happy and full and content. We rode home and all had an early to bed night after a VERY early morning for Marty and Josie and a late night the night before for Marty and I.
Here is to 50!!!
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