Hump year

For the past two years, my birthday has rolled around and I’ve inevitably found myself asking Ryan, “how old am I going to be?”

Thank goodness he’s on top of things (or at least good at math) otherwise, I might have been stuck at 25 forever.   Not that Id’ be complaining about that!  27 is a weird age.  It’s almost 30, which to many is such a pivotal number, but its just over 25, which to many is a landmark.

I am declaring 27 the hump year!  That makes today, my hump birthday!  That sounds like something to celebrate!!

And celebrate I did {my style}–I woke up bright and early at 9:45am (sleep much?), followed it up with a nice hot cup of tea, and one of my favorite morning indulgences, a buttered roll (which in my eating world is a big no-no) which reminds me of my favorite biggest brother, who got me hooked on dunking rolls into said tea.  Yes, he used to drink hot tea with me, though I’m sure such accusations would be denied today.   As I was sitting down getting ready to enjoy one of my favorite morning routines, I realized I would not have a birthday cake this year.

My mother always tries to make our birthdays special.  One of the things she always did for us was to make sure we had a birthday cake.  This is a very thoughtful and awesome gesture, but in thinking about not having one this year I realized with a pit in my stomach that this may be the first sign of {gasp} old age! No longer are the days of birthday cake for breakfast!!

I rounded out my morning catching up on my favorite blog-sites and sipping a second glass of tea until I finally talked myself into dredging up all the dusty boxes from the basement to put away all the Christmas decorations that have so welcomly warmed our home.  This, coupled by dusting, vacuuming and mopping passed the time until my love got home to take me out to what has quickly become one of our favorite restaurants.  For Ry’s birthday in October, we decided to try this new-to-us but much talked about place called Lombardino’s here in Madison.  It looks like a whole in the wall place with a pizza guy painted on the cinder-block outside, but when you go inside you are transported  to Italy and find yourself engrossed in a menu you probably won’t understand.

See, if you didn’t know any better (or read the damn sign) you might expect a rickety little pizza place……but instead you get this:

A little ambiance…..

And THIS:

mmmmmm…..a fancy kinda eggplant parm!

And some sort of fancy lamb-chop with some amazingness underneath.  Ry went out on a limb, I tried the amazing fancy stuff underneath and he ate the whole lamb part….

But let’s not forget about their to-die-for tiramisu!  I didn’t even know I liked the stuff ’till I went here! ANND they even lit me a little candle 🙂

Tomorrow, I’m getting my diet back on track, so tonight I celebrated like it was my birthday.   (And it was!)  I’m sure you’ll be hearing about that journey….

If I had to do my birthday over again, I’d probably do it just the same.  I might always miss having birthday cake for breakfast come the morning of January 5th, and I’ll never replace the warmth of waking up to my mothers boquet of balloons or tolerance of having dozens of teens over to help me celebrate moving on in life–but if anything has to take place of those moments, it would be days like today, where piece of mind, solitude, memories of love, and the love of my life surround me.

Here’s to being 27, and taking huge steps in my life, including continuing following my passion of photography, and marrying my best friend.  Does it get any better than this?