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The main event for my wife’s birthday this year was our departure for a weekend in Maine – without our kids! We were to leave shortly after Grandma arrived at our house to take charge of the kids at 10:30 in the morning. Well, you know how that goes. We ended up not leaving town till almost noon! 🙂
No problem, though. We were on vacation! It was Jen’s birthday!!
Let me back up a bit. As I was packing up on Thursday night for our week in Maine, I thought it would be fun to put our 24-hour McDonalds to work for Jen’s birthday. She had gone to bed by 11:30 or so, so I knew it would be perfect. She thought I was packing, so wouldn’t wonder where I had gone off to, and I could slip out to McDs and grab her some of her favorite food to eat at midnight on her birthday!!! After a few adventures, I returned about 12:20am with some McNuggets and fries, and set them out on our coffee table in the living room. I went upstairs and told Jen I had something for her downstairs for her birthday, and she (surprisingly) went along quite willingly, and we enjoyed a little happy birthday snack while taking in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.
A great start to her birthday. 🙂
Back to the trip to Maine… on our way out of town, I got Jen a roasted chicken sub from Subway, another one of her favorites, and a two-liter of caffeine-free Coke from Family Dollar (another Jen favorite) 🙂 We had a decent trip to Albany, where we took a little stroll through the Apple Store in Crossgates Mall. I had hoped I could buy Jen something from the Apple store for her birthday, but with our finances as they are, she had to settle for a Pretzel from Mr. Pretzel. 🙂
We got back on track for Maine at about 4pm, and the hope was to get to our destination and buy Jen a nice dinner to complete her birthday celebration at the on-site restaurant where we would be staying. But, in Rutland, VT, we noticed that we still had quite a ways to go, so dinner would be quite late. We were at a McDonalds for a pit stop, so we both thought it would be a good idea to grab a snack.
While we were ordering, we were chatting about our trip with the man taking our order (who seemed to be the manager on duty). We mentioned how we were looking forward to a few days without kids, and he talked a bit about his kids, and how he was glad they were grown. 🙂 And, as I got my wallet out to pay for our food, the manager slapped the receipt down on the counter and said, “Happy Birthday. It’s on me.” 🙂
That was cool. Free McDonalds for Jen’s birthday! 🙂
So we continued on, and after navigating through some small New England towns (usually behind a few slower vehicles) we realized that we were not going to make it to Maine in time for a birthday dinner. We were in a little town called Lancaster in New Hampshire (Our first visit to that state. Can you believe that? We’ve visited probably 45 other states, but not New Hampshire… which is two states away. Quite odd.) Jen saw a little family restaurant, so we stopped in at 8:55pm for her birthday dinner. 🙂
(The sign said they closed at 9:00, so that was again, quite nice of them.)
This was a very unique location as the owner had once owned this family restaurant and the local Chinese restaurant, but had since combined them into one. So the menu and the decor were half American, and half Chinese. It was really very interesting.
So, we had a nice dinner, and then only about another hour on the road until we reached our destination. It had beena long day though, so we unloaded some stuff, and enjoyed our new location for a bit (I think Jen looked in every closet) and then we wearily went to BED! 🙂
A long day, but a great one for Jens’ 2005 birthday. 🙂