His birthday is the 3rd of July and this year he turned 38. It's ok, he's a guy, he's not sensitive about his age. His birthday was a day of presents, watching "X-Men: First Class" at the AMC and noshing strawberry cheesecake. The evening before was a time for the Belgian bistro, the Cock & Bowl, in Historic Occoquan.
There's nothing better than eating outdoors, fresh moules frites, delicious beers, and a tasty dessert to share.
The mussels were offered in an assortment of sauces. Mine involved Gruyere, Ian's had wine and mushrooms.
As the designated driver and non-birthday-person, the A&W was mine. Ian had our favorite raspberry beer, Lindemans Framboise. Yeah, I was jealous. But that was OK because we had a bottle of our own waiting at home which we shared on the 4th with my parents.
Ian's birthday on Sunday was the quiet day with presents and a movie.
We were all pleasantly surprised by how good X-Men turned out. I wasn't sure I'd care, the whole "let's take a comic book and make it into a movie" thing is really getting old, but they pulled it together. I'm still not excited about the Captain America one, and we didn't bother with Green Hornet, Green Lantern or any of the other recent live action comic book silliness.
For the 4th we had my folks over for some grilled meat and sides and dessert.
While the kids waited for food to be ready, they painted some cute little animals we'd picked up from the craft store.
If I remember I'll get a shot of their finished products.
Cake!
Someone tell my why Katherine gets center stage for that photo when her birthday is in February?? Silly kid.
Satiated and with my folks off to their house, we packed up the car to drive to Dolphin Beach.
If you look closely you see the green hill in the distance and beyond that is a pale line of more people on the opposite side of the fireworks line. We sat over there last year, it's on the golf course and more "walkable" from home (because you can't cut across the course where the fireworks are set up to reach the beach). Walkable in the sense that yes, you can walk, but it takes nearly an hour and you do the return trip when it's still 90 degrees in the dark with bugs swirling about. This year we drove and parked a couple blocks away from the beach entrance. So much easier and plenty of room on the hill even just 30 minutes before. Some folks arrived at the beach at 9 in the morning to secure a spot at the picnic tables, which I couldn't really understand, we had a fine spot for the 10 minute show with an easy walk back to the car as the clouds started dripping. The girls disappeared as soon as we arrived to hang out with friends, but the boys stuck with us.
You can't beat that kind of weekend.
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