Man, I’m getting old

The one morning that I had something up my sleeve is the one morning that Riley decides to wake up early. I had to sneak around and get on skype with his mom so that we could surprise him at 7:52 AM and say Happy Birthday since that is officially the time he was born. That surprise was slightly ruined, but I know that Riley was still excited to see his mom, even though we apparently looked like aliens through skype since the connection was so bad. Riley had recently just gotten a potato cookbook and had spotted a recipe for potato cakes, so you can probably figure out what we were having for his birthday breakfast. The recipe turned out to be a lot harder than we thought and decided that hash browns would be a better idea to go with our three course breakfast. We took the morning easy until we realized that we didn’t want to be wasting the special day away. Riley was about to be a free man once he turned in his last final paper of the semester! We had planned on using our passes to go to the Sydney Wildlife center especially since it was all rainy outside but with it already being past 1 o’clock we thought we’d wait on that so we didn’t have to rush through it. Instead we made the quick decision to go to IKEA and browse around since that’s one of our favorite places. Even though we weren’t hungry we ate the lunch that we packed, but looking back we wish we wouldn’t have. It actually made us even more full from the three course breakfast and prevented us from getting hungry for dinner. To kill time we headed back to finish watching a movie that we had started the night before, Wreck it Ralph. With it being all rainy outside it was the perfect afternoon activity. Plus, it turned out to be a great movie and usually Riley doesn’t like animated ones. The movie finished in just enough for us to head out to trivia but unfortunately we got a text from our friend Neill saying that he wasn’t going to be able to make it out to trivia. This was a little disappointing since we always look forward to this particular trivia night, but we understood. Plus that meant we could go to dinner like we had planned and not have to wait until 10 o’clock to eat. However, we weren’t even hungry but rather just knew we had to pick a place before everything closed. Riley was set on just having home cooked spaghetti but I was not going to let that happen. He finally decided on this chicken place down Glebe Point Rd that is seriously amazing, plus they give you an over abundant amount of fries. Unfortunately, when we got there the place was already closed even though their website said they were open until 8:30 PM. This really upset Riley since he was looking forward to it, meaning no other place sounded appetizing – not even Dominoes pizza. We walked down the road to see if anything else jumped out at him, but I figured it was probably a lost cause. We finally decided that I could just cook up some delicious chicken sandwiches for us topped with mayo, barbeque sauce, pineapple, green pepper, cheese and lettuce. I would say they were a nice alternative to going out. Plus we had an appetizer of shelled peanuts and a picture of his mom in hopes to symbolize her being there with us. This was the first birthday she has missed with Riley so it was the least I could do.

Anyone who knows Riley knows this was the perfect birthday dinner. Chicken sandwiches with baked beans, cola and peanuts. I'd say those are some of his favorite things. Also note that his mom joined us - top right corner!

I attempted to make a cake but it just didn’t turn out like a wanted even though Riley was a fan of it. I just couldn’t let his birthday pass without giving it a shot though. To top things off for the day, Riley got his surprise package from his mom that was long awaited for. It contained lots of cards from home which I thought was a great way to remind Riley about his friends and family back home. I also had to break the surprise and tell him about his birthday present from his mom – a Bridge Climb. I had been planning with her and although the date for his birthday was booked, we’d be doing the Bridge Climb on Tuesday! He was like a little kid in a candy shop opening all those cards, but I was happy for him! Birthdays only come once a year!