Last week was my husband’s 32 birthday. (You don’t mind me sharing your age publicly, do ya babe? Good. I didn’t think so…)

I love birthdays. Yours. Mine. Everyones!

But I especially love celebrating my hubby.

Mike’s birthday fell midweek, so we kept things pretty simple. I made a special meal with things I knew he’d love. The boys and I picked up a few presents and together, around the family dinner table, we celebrated the man my little boys call “daddy,” and whom this lucky girl gets to call her own.

For dinner, I made a Lemon Butter Garlic Shrimp Scampi with Angel Hair Pasta, homemade one-pot bread and a big Greek salad. We all loved the pasta dish. It came together SO quickly, and only had about five ingredients. The bread is my go-to bread recipe. It requires little kneading, is easy to adapt to your own preferences (this time I threw in rosemary, parmesan cheese, cracked pepper, and sunflower seeds), and is basically fool-proof. Try it. I think you’ll like it!

For dessert, I made an apple cake, because Mike likes apple desserts.

When Mike and I first got married, it used to infuriate me that Mike didn’t have preferences. I would say, “What’s your favorite food?” and he would be all like, “Uhhh, I dunno.”

How do you not know what your favorite food is???

This was quite the dilemma for me for our first year of marriage. My brother and I used to play this game when we were together where we would just go back and forth and ask each other the “what’s your favorite” question for hours. What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite way to annoy mom? You get the picture. I loved this game. I love doing this with anyone because it’s such a fun way to get to know someone. Plus, it can digress into some pretty funny questions.

Anyways. My point is, this was a big deal that I couldn’t have this interaction with the hubs. Not to mention, it just drove me absolutely insane. I knew he had to have preferences, I felt like he was just unwilling to share them.

*I’ve since learned that no, he wasn’t withholding information, he was just a typical guy and couldn’t care less about most things I was asking about. He was, as much as I couldn’t understand it, genunily fine with whatever. Whatever we watched. Whatever we ate. etc. However, he has learned to have a few “favorites” in mind because he knows that I want to know this stuff so that I can do nice things for him. Like make apple cake for his birthday, because apple desserts are his favorite. Whew. That was a long way of explaining the apple thing, but I think we are all better for it.

But anyways, back to Mike’s birthday.

It’s funny how kids change things. I was thinking about this that night. Theo got a big kick out of handing daddy his present, and both boys energetically sang daddy the birthday song and tried to blow out his candles. (They continued to do this even after the candles on the cake were blown out. It was very gross and very annoying.)

After dessert had been eaten and gifts handed out, the boys moved on to other things while Mike and I continued to sit together at the table. Kids add a lot of crazy to your life. A lot of work. A lot of frustration. But they also add this fullness that is unmistakeable. Sometimes that fullness is a little overwhelming, like when you are trying to grocery shop with a full cart of groceries and your hands are full of kids. But then there are other times, like the night we celebrated Mike’s birthday, that the fullness is just so nice.

It’s nice to have your home teeming with life and love in those moments.

Mike’s diploma for his Master’s in Educational Leadership, which he completed this past August, came on his birthday! What a nice surprise! We are all SO proud of the hard work it took for Mike to not only complete the program, but to do it so well while continuing to take care of us!