Blogging our Birthdays

Ami and I both have summer birthdays. His in July mine in August. Both of our birthdays actually are pretty much the same every year. For Ami, always a barbeque at his parents house with mud pie as the appetizer (because it's dairy) and  wiffle ball tearing up the front lawn with our friends. For me, it's being grumpy, avoiding phone calls and pretending it's not happening. 

This year, being here, both of our birthdays were different.

One Rozmaryn tradition is waking up the birthday person with a ring ding. I don't know when it started, but it's a big deal. Well, there are no ring dings here, so me and Eitan woke up Ami with mini eclairs from Marzipan. Note the time on the clock back there- yep that's before 6am...thanks Eitan.

 For Ami's birthday I got him a gift that really took a village. He got a Robert Griffin III Jersey (he's the newest Redskin, number 2 in the overall draft, kind of a big deal!). Our friend Jesse ordered it through his special hook up in China, Ami's brother Gadi picked it up from Jesse's and brought it to Mindy, Mindy brought it to Hillel to give to Graham who was coming to Israel in June. Exhausting amounts of logistics right there people. And lots of thank yous. But mostly to me for thinking of and coordinating team RG3 jersey.


For my birthday, Ami was smart. He leaves for work at 6:30 am, right around when Eitan's getting up, and generally says good morning to me by dropping Eitan into my bed as I'm still sleeping and telling me that I'm on. And of course, he wished me a happy birthday. When I went into the kitchen that morning to get our breakfasts ready I saw this curious note on the fridge (if you can't make it out, it says, Happy Birthday Miriam look inside):

And when I opened the freezer, this is what greeted me:

That's half a kilo (about a pound) of gelato from Aldo arguably the best ice cream place in Jerusalem. It's down the street here on Emek Refaim, and Ami secretly brought it home the night before as he comes in late from his football practice and I'm usually already in bed.

So that's what a pound of ice cream and 31 spoons looks like. Ami said the man  at the shop thought he was a total lunatic for asking for 31 of the tasting spoons, but that makes it a better gift, right? And for those wondering the flavors in there were lemon vodka, coffee and rocher (a chocolate bar that's fabulous in ice cream and regular form as well).

My present which arrived in the mail was a soda stream. I have wanted one for ages! And once we found out that it doesn't plug in (which means it will work in both Israel and the US without any converter plugs) I convinced Ami that we must have one. And apparently on the website if you order online you can pick the day it arrives. That's pretty cool. And the company is based here in Israel, so score one for supporting the local economy.

When the mailman dropped it off, Eitan obviously thought it was his. 

And I took the opportunity to stick our kid in a box. A family tradition of sticking him in places (popcorn bowls, sombreros, other boxes, salad bowls) that's coming to an end now that he is not only bigger but strong willed about where he does and does not want to be. So that was a bonus present for me.

Anyways, this year I decided that I no longer dislike my birthday. Mostly because my biggest fear was 30, and that's come and gone, and now in my old age I realize the more I make a big deal about not liking my birthday, the bigger deal everyone else makes. So it's over. Birthdays are fine. Ami's 30, I'm 31. Over it. Of course, the ice cream helped. Yep, it was gone fairly quickly (Ami had too).

And for all of the birthdays we missed this year, here's a bonus gift of our crazy kid spinning around and around making himself drunk sick:




Spinning Round and Round! from mimi rozmaryn on Vimeo.