Mike's 5 part Birthday Adventure

Mike is having quite the birthday month. I am excited that he has embraced my philosophy of a birthday month rather than just one day of celebration. Part 1 of Mike’s birthday month was dinner at the Jolly Rodger with my dad and Denice on Nov 7^th. Mike and I have been wanting to check out the Jolly Rodger for a few months now and we are glad we did. The prices are semi high, but we get tons of coupons in the mail so that helped bring it down. It was right on the water in Oceanside Harbor and the theme of the restaurant was really cool. We will go back for sure, but with a coupon! Denice got Mike Glee Cranium, which I am super excited to play. We just need to find some fellow Gleeks to play with. Oh I also want to point out that we Kon Mari’d the downstairs closet and garage on the 7^th. Mike and I had wanted to get to the downstairs closet and we finally just dove in. We took everything out and realized that I had been saving tons of empty boxes. When I was moving every year while in school, I found it was much easier to move the appliances in the boxes they came in and developed a habit of saving them. Now that we are more settled and expect to move less often, I am giving up on saving all those boxes and Styrofoam. We also moved some things to the garage, including the shelf that was in the closet. It made a lot more sense to us to keep the things we use the most (like the pet food and vacuum) neat and organized and easily accessible in the closet and the things we use less often (i.e. my chocolate fountain) to the garage shelf. So far we really like what we did and it is working out a lot better for us.

Part 2 was on Nov 8^th. Mike basically invited everyone over for a daylong celebration. Mike’s parents came in the morning for a few hours, but the bulk of the party was in the afternoon. It was pretty fun and Mike had a great time with all his friends. I was sick and taking Sudafed, so I was not drinking. There were tons of fun beers, so I decided to grab one of each and save them for later when I was feeling better. Well that was great in theory, but there was so much beer, that I ended up saving quite a bit more than I realized. I am well stocked for the next few months with fun and interesting flavors.

Part 3 was on Veteran’s Day. Since Mike had the day off, we were able to go out to dinner, which we usually cannot do because of his night classes. We went to Benihana, where the birthday coupon can only be used Mon-Thurs, since that was really the only day we could go. We were super hungry when we got there and I went a little crazy with happy hour appetizers. We had sushi, stuffed jalapeño poppers, and I think one other thing I can’t remember. We each got a 5 course dinner, which consisted of soup, salad, shrimp appetizer, dinner, ice cream and tea. By the time we got to dinner, I was stuffed! It was nice though because I took it home and had it for lunch the next day, which was delicious!

Part 4 was on Saturday, November 21^st. We went to Mike’s BBQ in Escondido with another birthday coupon. It was pretty tasty. I had fries with cheese and pulled pork, which was amazing and Mike had brisket. We would for sure go back, probably for my birthday month when we get another coupon.

Part 5 of Mike’s birthday month will be on Thanksgiving with my family. We tend to combine birthdays and since Mike is the only one with a birthday in November, he gets combined with Thanksgiving, which works for him because it is a holiday all about eating and he loves to eat.

I am hoping to have one more post for Thanksgiving then we leave for Israel on Dec 3^rd! We are so excited!