The Birthday - His Side of the Story

Whatever! Where did you get all those phony pictures?

Actually everybody, her day went more like this.

She woke up and realized I had transported her to Hawaii while she slept. She mentioned the breakfast in bed, which was factual, but she neglected to write the menu, so I won't either. Suffice it to say it was Hawaiian rhapsody on a plate!  Of course, I prepared it all myself, having secretly taken a cuisine course over the past two months paid for by a scholarship I won in a poetry contest. Go figure. Anyway, after breakfast we hopped on a helicopter and flew slowly over the Hawaiian islands. I took the opportunity to recite to her my latest poem. The preview of the first stanza goes like this:

The very thought of you,
And thinking halts my time to naught,
Ending every useless waiting task's persistent prodding,
Vacantly wandering 'round the stops of my memory,
Circling mostly the ones you've touched
Or singularly composed
Just for me.

She cried... because I'm so dang romantic.

We landed the chopper back at the hotel and I took her on a light hike over to my favorite cliff view. I made sure beforehand that it would be just us so I could sing her "our song," which is Natalie Cole's rendition of "The Very Thought of You," hence the first line of my poem. She cried some more. We definitely did some kissing there.

As we walked back down to the village, I handed her a fancy formal invitation to the premiere of my latest piece for choir and percussion. As soon as we got down the hill I had her follow me around the corner where the concert was set up and ready to start. Naturally, the audience was packed, half for my amazing advertising efforts and half because the concert was out on the shore of the beach where there were hundreds of people present anyway. She loved the music like she always does. We made sure to thank the crowd briefly, but made it out of there quickly since the day wasn't supposed to be about me.

I took her straight to lunch... on a tiny island no bigger than a soccer field. There was this restaurant that catered out there for special occasions. It was amazing. We didn't speak a word the whole meal until she put her wooden fork down and said quietly, "I love you, David." It was my turn to cry, so I did a little. Felt good.

We held hands on the dingy all the way back to the main island.

When we got back to the hotel I told her she had two hours before we had to be anywhere, and I asked her what she would like to do until then. She said it would be a great time to read a good book, but she was bummed because she hadn't brought any. If there's anything I do know about Kristin, it's that she likes to read. So I patted myself on the back for thinking ahead for once and dumped onto the bed every book she was in the process of finishing. If you know her, you know there was a handful. She smiled big, hugged me bigger and made herself a cozy spot out on the balcony and proceeded to read for the next hour or so. I won't get into what we did with the remainder of time.

Next, I surprised her with an afternoon of snorkling (spelling?) out on the reef. It wasn't her first snorkling experience. She snorkeled with sea lions once and got published for the story she wrote about it.
Dinner was a blast! Seafood and karaoke! Lots of people were drunk and crazy. Watching them make fools of themselves was half the fun. We were so crazy though, we might as well have been drunk!

We didn't stay long. The flight back cut the evening short. We flew back basically in bliss. The day was pretty perfect.

What's funny is that we got back this morning at about 8:30. The Hawaii time difference let us have her birthday once on a beautiful island and once at home with her family! I did not actually plan that part.
Those pictures she posted here are probably of things she did on the second today. She totally milked her big day for all it was worth. Who could blame her though!? She works non stop to make my life as easy and as enjoyable as possible. She needed it.

Oh, and we left the kids with our friends the Mousers. They were asleep for a lot of it. It worked out perfectly. Anyway, I might have left out some things, but the best of it is in there. So there you have it. She just doesn't like to post about all the extravagant things we get to do sometimes. Remind me sometime to tell you about what really went down in Italy!