Birthdays & Big Dude ...

Big Dude and I have a longish, rather sordid history of celebrating his birthdays.

I grew up in a family that celebrated birthdays with plenty of festivity, gift-giving, and privileges (don't have to make bed, get to skip kitchen duty, get to pick dinner food, yadayada ... it was all a VERY BIG DEAL). My dad, to this day, still works his birthday for all it's worth, starting the month before: "This is the month before my birthday month ... this is the week before my birthday week ... this is the day before ..." well, you get the point). Birthdays in my family were and are a BIG DEAL.

Then I married Big Dude. Big Dude is not so much into bdays. I spent the first several years of our marriage trying to make a BIG DEAL of his bday, just to have my efforts squashed (mostly in the form of having to return any item that I bought him). I quickly (or not so quickly) learned that clothes are not gifts. Once I figured out that part of the equation (yup, I'm dull enough that Big Dude needed to tell me directly. Several times. Which I then translated to mean that I must not have found him the clothes he really liked, but if I did ... Now I know. Clothes do NOT equal gifts. Period. No exceptions.) And after several more years of fruitlessly trying to find the perfect not-clothes bday gift that filled his love tank, I pretty much stopped trying. Big Dude is just not a gift-receiving kinda guy.

Over the years we have managed to morph into a birthday compromise pattern. This year Big Dude launched into "the month before, week before, day before" celebration by shopping (and by "shopping", I mean Craigslisting & Ebaying - because, of course, half the fun is in the "winning") for his own bday gifts. Wanna know what he bought? Legos. And guess to whom he handed over all the winnings? Oh yah, younger dudes. Because that's the kind of guy Big Dude is.

And here's the kind of gift the dudes and I are "safe" to gift to him: snacks. :-) In a decorator bag. Double-smile.






To celebrate, Big Dude also got to pick his dinner menu and dessert and his day's outing. Know what activity he picked? The exact outing that I've mentioned once or twice in the past that I'd love to have our family do. That's my man. I think I'll keep him.





Managed to catch us all in this next one :-) ...







And that was our bday celebration for Big Dude. 'Twas a good day. And now I will go back to being short on words...