24

March 12th was my 24th birthday. The only thing planned was to go out on a date so we called a married couple that are friends of ours and asked if they would mind hanging out at our place while Maisie was down for the night while we went out for a few hours. They were awesome about it too. Seth had to work the next morning, but him and Leia were both very sweet to come over to give us a night out, just the two of us. Oh and did I mention they have a 3 month old? (who is seriously one of the cutest babies I have ever seen) what good friends they are to help us out like that. We are so grateful for them.

The day started off with a slow morning wake up. We fed Maisie breakfast, got ready for the day and started to make our way towards Capitola (by Santa Cruz) for lunch and a beach day. We ate at a restaurant called Gale's. Oh. My. Goodness. It was so delicious. We had the most difficult time picking out our food and then of course there was an array of gorgeous desserts. We even picked a couple up for Seth and Leia as a thank you. Everything was just so beautiful and delicious.

After lunch we found a kite shop where we bought our first little kite. A no assembly required, fool proof kite complete with a long rainbow colored tail and storage bag. We walked to the beach where we basked in the sun, flew our trusty little kite, searched for seashells and watched as Maisie ran bravely up and down the shore.

After a few hours we decided to make our way back home so we could feed Maisie some dinner and get her ready for bed as we got ready for our date. Maisie went down better than expected seeing how it was day lights savings the day before, so 8 o'clock really felt like 7 o'clock, but we made sure to tire her out the best we could at the beach. Seth, Leia and Quincy came over we thanked them a million times as they tried to get us out the door. 

Since we were having a late dinner, we were going back and forth between restaurant ideas. Austin suggested sushi and I was feeling brave (it was my birthday after all) so sushi it was. Austin's work gets catered by this restaurant occasionally so Austin knew it was a good place. I was more of a wimp than expected, but I did try raw tuna, salmon row and a little grilled eel. I never realized how expensive sushi is! Holy moly. My overall reaction was "it was ok." I found it unappetizing to get full off of, but for a few bites it was great. The texture is a hard thing to get over. Maybe with time I will find it better, but I think I filled my sushi quota for a while.

After dinner we went to a fancy bowling alley for a quick game. We were both terrible, but it made for some good laughs. Austin did get one strike and I got one spare, but other than that it was pretty pathetic. Haha

Pictures of my birthday extravaganza.

Phone pictures:

Camera pictures:

I'm zaubermaus (magic mouse) Austin is eisbaer (polar bear) these fake German nick names are way better than our fake German names we picked out in our high school German class- Helga and Heinz.