How I celebrated my Birthday...

It's my Birthday today!

I decided to take the day off and spend it with the family. Alas, The Lovely Wife has something pressing at work but that was a great excuse for me to spend some quality time with the kids.

The kids woke me up early with two lovely handmade cards. I still look a little sleepy in this picture...


I also got my presents - a nice shirt that was wrapped up to look like a cylinder as Sarah wanted me to think it was a Camera Lens. I also got a lovely pair of cufflinks.



If you look closely, the cufflinks are engraved with I Love my Dad. My son asked me, if I wear the cufflinks, does it mean that I love my father or would it mean that my children love me...




The kids and I weren't sure how we wanted to spend the day. So rather than planning everything in detail, we decided to play it by ear and go out for breakfast first. We went to the nearby Old Town White Coffee and stuffed ourselves with Peanut Butter toast, Eggs on Toast as well as Hazelnut Iced Coffee - two cups actually!!







After breakfast, we took a drive to the nearby Science Centre to see if the Dino's Alive exhibition that we had seen advertised was already showing. Unfortunately, it only starts on December 1st. Michael made a note of it though and hopefully we'll go see it soon.

Next plan of action was to take a drive to The Curve and on the way, we thought we'd make a slight detour and go to the Houz Depot (a huge home improvement shop) since it was still really early and most of the shops in The Curve would be closed. Funnily enough, the Houz Depot was closed too so we just doubled back to The Curve and started to walk around an almost empty shopping mall.

It was actually quite fun watching shops open up and being the only people around. After bumming around a little while, shops started to open up and we made a beeline for Borders where we spent some time browsing for books. Both the kids got some books for themselves. After browsing in a few other shops, we decided we wanted an early lunch as we were all feeling a little peckish (read greedy!).

For lunch we went to Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Firstly I had to explain that Bubba Gump originated from a movie and all that. The kids had more fun calling it Bubble Gum though! The waitress came by to explain that the two licence plates on the table are to 'stop' the waiters if you need anything. The Blue "Run Forrest, Run" plate means you dont require any service while the Red 'Stop Forrest, Stop' means you need service!



After scanning through the menu, we decided on the
Bubba’s After the Storm “Bucket of Boat Trash” which is basically Deep fried Shrimp, Fish and Lobster Tail that is served with Fries. We didnt take photos though as we were too greedy...

We DID take photos of the dessert though. I got a free Chocolate Sundae for my Birthday while we ordered something called That Chocolate Thing - Warm flourless chocolate cake in a jar topped with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Theres also some raspberry sauce that the cup sits on. The kids polished off the ice cream on top very quickly so it was a good thing that I had enough of my ice cream to go with it!! The dessert was indeed very yummy and I would go back there just to have That Chocolate Thing again.




Both the kids lay back in their seats after eating so much with a smile of satisfaction on their faces. We waddled and plodded our way to the car and just to work off some calories, we went to Houz Depot for a little while before returning home.

The best thing was, it was only three pm by the time we got home!! What a wonderful day with the kids celebrating my birthday.

My parents came over in the evening with another present for me...



Now we just have to wait for The Lovely Wife to come home and maybe we'll go pig out somewhere again!!

Happy Birthday to me!!!!