As I mentioned in my recent article A Celebration of Life, birthdays are definitely a big deal for me, my family, and now my husband. It’s truly a time to rejoice and celebrate the gift of life. Whether it’s taking time to remember all the blessings, lessons learned, and memories made or making the effort to express the value of a loved one in your life, birthdays are the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Like every year, I plotted and planned for months to come up with the perfect way to celebrate my husband’s birthday – after all this is my yearly tribute to the gift that he is in my life. I finally settled on our agenda that started Friday (June 17^th) on his actual birthday and stretched through the weekend to Sunday.

Friday morning I kicked off his actual birthday with what has become a yearly, birthday tradition – fresh, homemade cherry cheesecake muffins and my own private rendition of Happy Birthday sang first thing in the morning before he left for work. That was followed by a lunch date at the restaurant of his choice, which ended up being the always delicious Chick-fil-A. When Steve arrived home, we got dolled up to head out to dinner at Roy’s, a restaurant we fell in love with on our visit to the Big Island of Hawaii. Personalized menus with a birthday greeting, confetti on the table, and a framed picture to remember the night by, Roy’s has got hospitality down to a science. We finished the night off with Steve opening his birthday gifts and cards – always a fun part of celebrating.

The weekend continued Saturday morning with some laid back, old married couple style running around town. We love doing simple things like that together, and we even ventured out to another of Steve’s favorite places to eat for lunch, Cosi. After enjoying our average morning and afternoon out and about, we came home to prep for our evening plans – a BBQ with two of our favorite friends Ryan and Diane. With our special company by our sides, we had a delicious dinner, lots of laughing, and a Coldstone birthday cake remix ice cream cake (pretty much the greatest thing ever) to top off day two of our celebrations.

Sunday was the big celebration day that I had planned for Steve. We got up bright and early, grabbed some coffees and breakfast, and headed over to Balboa Island to catch our ride to Catalina Island for the day. Once onboard, we enjoyed the much longer and choppier ride than we had anticipated over to the island. We had heard mixed reviews of Catalina Island; some people thought it was great while others weren’t such big fans, but we opted to leave expectations at the door and arrive at the island with an open mind.

Upon arrival to the main town, Avalon, we instantly loved its quaint appeal. It was an interesting hybrid of a Mediterranean escape meets small, Americana town. The water was gorgeous, the shops adorable, restaurants interesting, and the overall vibe inviting. After walking through the limited number of streets, we picked up a mid-morning snack and went straight to our big adventure for the day – the two hour long zip line eco tour as seen in The Bachelor Pad.

On our honeymoon we had ventured to go on a zip line tour and loved it, so I thought this would be the perfect activity for us to tackle in celebration of Steve. It was even better than our previous zip line experience; it was incredible! The views were spectacular, the zip lines were long, fast, and exhilarating, and the tour guides were fabulous and funny. We loved every second of it and would highly recommend it to anyone headed to Catalina any time soon.

After having our big thrill for the day, we walked hand-in-hand weaving through the shops and reading menus to find our re-fueling station. We settled on a place called Original Jack’s Country Kitchen, and it was … interesting. Bellies somewhat full, we hit up some of the local candy and ice cream shops where we over-indulged in a lot of junk food that was delightful and well worth the calories. We finished off our short stint on Catalina Island by grabbing some touristy memorabilia, and then heading back to our boat for the trek back to Newport Beach.

Exhausted from all of our weekend fun, we stumbled back to our car, picked up dinner, and headed home to snuggle up for the night. It was such a fun weekend as we celebrated the gift of Steve’s life and forged new memories to look back fondly on. Birthdays are such an incredible opportunity to take time to appreciate all of your blessings in life, especially those you love!

Anyone else have any fun birthday traditions, excursions, or memories to share?

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