A plan

This weekend, there was a birthday. My birthday. After our particularly nice-long-exhausting treat of a holiday season (and I really mean a FULL season of treats and treating) I didn't have big plans for this particular birthday. Getting back into a normal, non-holiday rush schedule, enjoying the amazing January weather, drinking green smoothies and getting myself to the gym and pilates has been feeling pretty wonderful. Normal feels good.  Wrapping up the last few years of my twenties has felt pretty good and easy, AND becoming a year older doesn't exactly qualify me for big birthday territory just yet. So the plan was to have a simple birthday in the city. But things didn't exactly go as planned.

 


Instead, we went to Napa for the weekend. OOPS! Intern was offered the keys to a vacation house in St. Helena, which just happened to coincide with that birthday I mentioned, so we went. The weather happened to be particularly nice, so we rode bikes and tasted wine in the sun. We picnicked, we slept in, we tried out every feature of this fancy, French-chateau-styled vacation home in St. Helena-- complete with Viking range, sauna, pool, hot tub, steam shower, plush white robes and vineyard adjacent views. We didn't end up playing bocce ball on the serious-looking bocce ball court out back, but that was the only disappointment.



We dined, we bananagramed, and we felt almost a touch guilty when we heard about the snow in Seattle. Almost. We came home Sunday night and rounded out this nothing-special kind of birthday with a homemade, friend-made dinner of mint-asparagus potato ravioli, chocolate cupcakes and even more birthday treats, including my favorite cava. Stop it you guys. Just stop it.



Before it was all over, there was a tiny bit of shopping and happy hour downtown, and an Intern-made dinner of mashed potatoes, filet mignon, red wine and chocolate lava cake. Holy crap. We're really done with all the birthday-ing now, and its back to green smoothies and kale salad. I'm serious, I mean it!