We are a family of May birthdays so far. Mine is May 7th, Todd’s is May 18th, and according to the vet, Charlie (our cat) was born sometime around May as well. Todd turned the big 3-0 last year, and I went all out for him with a surprise out-of-town getaway that resulted in him meeting (and feeding!) some monkeys at the St. Louis zoo. He LOVES monkeys. Since I’m not made of money, I can’t afford another monkey encounter until his 40th birthday, so this year we played it a bit more low key.

This May 18th was a perfectly beautiful day in Missouri, so I suggested that we get up a bit early that Saturday and go for birthday breakfast before a walk in the park. Todd keeps what I like to call “musician hours” and goes to bed around 3-4am, so he’s not usually one for getting up early if he doesn’t have to, but he agreed to give the morning the old college try and we settled on a crack-of-dawn 10am wake up call.

We were actually going to go to McDonald’s for a breakfast in a bag to eat at the park, but breakfast was over by the time we got there (because all of America is apparently ready for McNuggets at 10:30 in the morning). So, we decided to go to a local breakfast spot called Anton’s instead.

Todd had the whole enchilada as far as breakfast food goes: pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon. I opted for an egg and toast and snuck bits off of his plate every other bite. I was so glad that we went there instead of greasing up our arteries with MickyD’s, the food was so good (I keep thinking about that pancake!) and it was such a cute little hometown place to linger and unwind.

Overall, we really had one of the best days on record so far. After the park outing, I gave him what he called his favorite present from me so far (a hammock) and we went to a sushi dinner and had drinks on our back porch under the stars until late. He’s such a special guy and I love when I can do things for him to show him how much I care. No monkey quality time this year, but I think we did pretty good without our primate pals.