The Big Guy turns 30...last week

 

So, Matt's birthday usually gets a little overshadowed by Claire's. But one thing he does have going for him is that his big day is also St Patrick's day, and since Chicago loves St Patrick's day, we can just pretend like the whole city is celebrating Matt's big day.

 In our little family, we have a tradition of eatting green pancakes on St Pat's.

This year, we added green milk. That was questionable because the dye went to the bottom of the drink and at the end of your milk you had to decide whether or not you wanted a big swig of food coloring. But it was the thought that counted. We were all trying to be very "green" for Matt's birthday. Sammy brought out his camouflage hat which he lives in anyway, and which he believed was going to keep him safe from the pinching gnomes who evidently live at his school on St Patty's day.

We dropped Matt off at work. We do that a lot anyway, but since it was his birthday we kicked it up a notch and made sure he was on time. We're good like that. He does not work at Starbucks, by the way. But there is one in his building.

The weekend before his birthday we celebrated with his family. We usually celebrate all the birthdays that occur in a month together with his family, so March was Claire and Matt's combined birthday dinner. Matt picked key lime pie over birthday cake, and Claire agreed, so they each got a pie for their day.

Aunt Sarah was there and she brought Claire fun spring clothes.

So was Aunt Rebecca and she brought Claire a beautiful carved butterfly treasure box from Ten Thousand Villages, which is a very cool place.

Uncle David was there, although he wouldn't take off his sunglasses. That's okay. Just having his coolness in our presence was good enough for us.  

And Matt's dad, "grandpa", was there, although after lunch he had to get a little shut eye.

We made orange and blue cupcakes for Grandpa to celebrate the fact that he just recently became an offensive line coach at Wheaton College, where Matt and I graduated. We're very excited for him about that!

Matt's mom, Grandma, was there although we didn't really get a picture with her...just this one of her sitting next to Rebecca. She was the star of the show though because she brought a big bag of gifts for Claire and Matt to go through together. They had to open all the gifts together and figure out who each present was for.

For instance, they each got a pair of sandals, which they apparently decided should be modeled with socks.

Poor the Big Guy is sick with a terrible sinus infection that even an antibiotic can't seem to kick, but we still managed to run out to a quick dinner at Carnivale last week so that we could have a little adult celebration for his big 3-0.  This place is really good.

We got ceviche and I got a rare tuna thing (that's okay in pregnancy right? Maybe not) and he got a steak. Granted we went at 5 o'clock when no one else was there, but we're dorks like that and that's when my friend could watch the kids so who cares. I think that's the first out-of-the-house date we've had in the last year, so we were not complaining.  I couldn't think of a great 30 year old gift, so I kinda dropped the ball there, but Matt's favorite thing is for me to NOT spend money, so maybe that was a gift in itself! Maybe. ;)