Hillary's birthday

Unlike my birthday, we did not have too many must do items on Hillary's birthday. There would be cake, of course. The dinner choice was always up to the birthday person.

Though even that last wasn't a hard thing for her. I think it was in Paige's first year. Isaac was kinda picky with food. We were both tired all the time and deciding on a meal was always stressful. I had asked a few times leading up to her birthday and Hillary wasn't really able to come up with anything.

So I ended up deciding. I don't remember what it was. I had an idea of most of Hillary's favourite meals at that time and would have picked one of them.

So what we did on that day varied as Hillary rarely gave a hard answer for what she wanted to do. A number of years we went out for dinner. In the last couple of years, we always did something fun with the kids.

One thing that was consistent after Isaac was born was that she always wanted to include the kids in whatever we did on that day. That was made clear as a couple of times she was given manicures or pedicures as gifts and she would never want to actually do those on the day of.

While she would, appropriately, want to mostly just have fun on her birthday, it was always a family day for her. I admit, that's not how I look at my birthday.

This year, we are celebrating her life. It's actually going to be a really busy day, which I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with, to be honest. It absolutely is the best day to do these things on and I'm glad this is all going on.

A part of my brain is going to be unhappy that I can't just be a sad ball on the floor all day. This would have been the end of the interregnum after all. She won't be older than me again.

It will be a day that gives closure for a lot of folks. That's good. The kids really want to have a birthday cake. We won't do that this year. I think we will in 2020 though.