My Birthday surprise!

It was my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have anything planned for it all and thought that maybe that evening when Seth got home from work, we wold get a takeaway and watch a DVD or something. On the Saturday before my Birthday (which was on the Wednesday), Seth said that he felt bad that he hadn't planned to do anything for my Birthday so he would take the day off and we could spend the day together. I was really excited about this as there is nothing I love more than spending the day with my boys.

On the morning of my Birthday, I woke up to Caleb and Seth walking into the bedroom singing Happy Birthday to me and presenting me with cards and with a large Costa hot chocolate with a shot of hazelnut in it (I'm a bit of a hot chocolate addict and ever since we have been married, we have lived no more than 10 minutes away from the nearest Starbucks, Costa or Caffe Nero. Every Birthday since we have been married, Seth has gone out to buy me a hot chocolate with a shot of almond or hazelnut. He is such a good husband!). I opened cards from family and saved the one from him and Caleb until last. He then presented me with my present - two tickets to go and see Riverdance in Blackpool. That night! I was so excited and I may have cried a little (blame the pregnancy hormones!). Seth told me that as soon as we were ready, we were driving up to Buxton to drop Caleb off at Seth's sister's where he would be spending the night, then we would be driving to Blackpool for the show and staying there overnight. I was beyond excited. It's the 20th anniversary tour for Riverdance and I have wanted to see it for about 18 years - that's no exaggeration! Laura and I had Riverdance on DVD and we loved watching it, we pretty much knew every performance back to front. When I heard that they were touring, I mentioned to Seth that I would love to go and see it and he should get us tickets for my Birthday (I'm not a demanding wife at all, ha ha!) but that was way back in April and I didn't think anything more of it! After I finished my hot chocolate, we got ourselves ready and packed and headed off on our journey.

I love car journeys with Seth as it's always such a great opportunity to talk and I always find us talking about things we just wouldn't chat about in general at home so it's always lovely. Caleb is a very content passenger too, as long as there's a radio station playing that he likes and he likes the songs, then he is well away! When we were about an hour away from Laura's house (Seth's sister Laura, not my sister Laura. Surprisingly, it never ends up getting too confusing - Caleb calls Seth's sister Auntie Laura and mine just Laura so he can differentiate between the two of them when we're talking about them!), Caleb started to get a bit whiney. I turned around to see what was wrong and he promptly threw up EVERYWHERE! It freaked him out completely and we pulled over to clean him up and to sort everything out. It took a while because both he and the carseat were completely covered! I was worried that Caleb had picked up a bug and was unwell but once we had changed him, he sat in the front with me, supposedly to cuddle and take it easy while Seth cleaned up. But Caleb was then full of energy, laughing away and pretending to drive the car!

So we thought he probably just got a bit car sick from driving around windy roads (a couple of days later we realised that no, in fact it was a bug. Lots more sickness to deal with but that's another story!).

We dropped Caleb off at Laura's about an hour later than intended and then made our way to Blackpool. We ended up getting caught in crazy traffic because there had been an accident. Both Seth and my heart sank because we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it to Blackpool in time and that we would miss the show. I was pretty disappointed as I was so excited about seeing it, but I was so disappointed for Seth as well, as he had put so much effort into planning it all for me. By some miracle, once we were through the worst of the traffic, we had a clear run to Blackpool, managed to check into our Bed and Breakfast and made it to the opera house and to our seats just as the announcement was being made about turning off mobile phones! We were both pretty relieved as we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it.

The show was incredible! Seth seemed to enjoy it (yep - Irish dancing is definitely more my thing than his!) but I was just blown away by it, the dancers were just amazing and so talented. Seeing it live was even more amazing than I thought and hoped it would be, when it finished, I just wanted to see it all over again!

The next day on the way back to Laura's, we stopped off in Manchester and did a bit of shopping at the Trafford Centre. As much as I love having Caleb with us, it was so lovely to just have some time with Seth as we don't really get that much time together, just the two of us! It was such an incredible Birthday and I have such an amazing husband for planning it all for me.