Birthday Week

Today is my birthday! I have been, however, celebrating it all week. In my house, we believe that one single day is not nearly enough time to celebrate the anniversary of one's birth. The tradition of celebrating birthday weeks actually started back when my husband, Rich, and I were dating. We hadn't been dating long when I tested him with the question "when is my birthday?". Ha. That's so mean. He actually wasn't far off when he guessed April 16th, which is exactly a week before my birthday. I think my birthday was coming up soon, so I told him, "Well, I guess we'll just have to start celebrating on the 16th until my actual birthday on the 23rd!" And, that's exactly what we did. What we learned from it, was that a week-long birthday is a lot of fun!! It's too hard to control just one day. You may have a rough day at work or the weather is yucky or you have something scheduled that you just can't get out of at night, etc. Birthday weeks give you 6 more days to make sure that your birthday was not "just another day"! I think it's vitally important to take time to celebrate and pamper yourself and to have others celebrate and pamper you as well. 

So, we both get a week of pampering each and we can decide when the week starts and ends (as long as our actual birth date falls in there somewhere). Rich likes to take the opportunity to get as many homemade cakes out of me as possible. His record so far has been 3!! For those of you who don't know him, he's a dietician who also happens to be a personal trainer and athlete-aholic. So, yes, he can definitely get away with eating 3 cakes, plus more, if he wanted and not gain an ounce! My favorite is getting special meals each night. He always does the cooking anyways, but for my week, the menu is catered to all of my favorite meals like grilled Salmon and a dish he makes with chicken, feta cheese, tomatoes and greek olives. This week, one of my birthday gifts was a waffle iron (which I SOOOOO wanted), so, one night for supper, we had waffles covered with strawberries and whip cream. Yum!

Moral of the story: I highly recommend birthday weeks!

P.S. The photo above (with me sitting on the table) was taken 29 years ago. I think this may have been my brother's birthday, whose birthday is only 3 weeks after mine, but I'm still sporting a birthday hat nonetheless.