Birthdays, love them or dislike them? I happen to like birthdays, mine and celebrating others. I know it is not something everyone enjoys doing, and as we are getting older it could be a reason to not want to celebrate, but I would argue that we should always want to celebrate the day we arrived into the world.

I wonder what age one changes from loving the celebration to dreading the day each year. When we are young, we want a theme that is a current trend or fad, book a venue, party supplies, loot bags, the cake. What about the cake? Probably the most exciting, chocolate or vanilla, cupcakes or sheet cake, pink or purple (and of course now no more candles).

At some point I decided to combine by love of birthdays and my passion for travel and start to celebrate my birthday with a trip. The first time was in 2006, for my 35th birthday to Paris. I am sure I have written about it before, but on my birthday we went up the Eiffel Tower during the day and the Moulin Rouge at night for my birthday. I will never forget that birthday. I was reminded of our Eiffel Tower experience over the weekend.

Other birthday trips that followed were a couple of birthdays in Los Angeles, one of them at at spectacular chocolate afternoon tea at the Langham hotel in Pasadena, New Orleans, Savannah and last year Jamaica. Savannah was fun, eating at Paula Deen’s restaurant as part of my birthday request. Each experience was memorable and I am reminded how grateful I am for having the opportunities I have had over the years to travel and how much I have seen and how much more there is to see.

You may be asking why I am writing about birthdays today? Well, today is September 8th, which is Heath’s birthday. The night before he passed away we had a few conversations, and one of them was our birthday plans for our 50th birthdays, which are in 2021. I told him that I found the trip we would take, and we would be able to put a deposit on it in the coming months. It is CRAZY to think that if we had put the money down on the trip, that it wouldn’t actually even be happening, after booking it more than three years in advance. It was a two week cruise to Australia and New Zealand.

I can’t end this birthday post without the mention of my #16plus30 birthday, which was the birthday that really changed my life. It is hard to imagine that a year before the party I thought of the idea, celebrating not 46 but the 30th anniversary of my Sweet 16. It was capped off by Heath being able to come in for the weekend and celebrate not just the party, but a really cool weekend of celebration. When he left, I knew I had a new friend for life.

Cheers to you, my friend. You are missed every single day, but you already know that.