Before we get into everything, let's start at the beginning. I married into even more May birthdays as Christi's grandpa's is on the 12^th, her mom's is on the 13^th and mine is on the 14^th. Last night, for her mom's birthday (Donna, we won't say how old!), we went over to Dale's house to cook some burgers and celebrate. During the gift giving process Dale proceeds to give her an old note that she wrote for him a year or two ago. So he held onto it and framed it as a nice gift. Here's where our story begins.

On our drive home I brought up the note and asked Christi if she remembered something like that. Back in our senior year of high school, I remember pulling into our driveway talking to Christi on the phone, and I had to hang up for just a second while I went inside. So I said, "can you wait for me?" To which I received the best answer in the world, "I've waited my whole life for you, why wouldn't I wait 15 more minutes?" With our story, and how perfect the answer was, I wrote it down and tucked it away in my wallet.

Now we fast forward to our senior year of college, and I say the exact same thing, and she fires back with the exact same answer. This triggers something in my head and I whip out the note and she was extremely impressed. It's just one of those things that you do when you're starting a relationship.

Alright, we should be caught up to tonight now. I get home and she has a bag on the island waiting for me, even after we agreed on some new (used) golf clubs as my gift this year. As I tear through and find MLB '08 and more Guitar Hero games (yes, I have the greatest wife ever) I open my card and it couldn't have been more perfect. It's times like these when you know that you're meant to be with the person you're with.

So this makes for a great story and blog post, but the night gets even better. She left work a little early to come home and bake me a cake. I caught her as the cake was rising and watched her put it together and top off the icing. Yes, we're getting the part about the title of the blog (you might have to scroll up if you forgot what it was).

She gets done and starts putting in the twenty four candles and we agree that we should write out the number 24 as we're sticking them in the cake. After she's done with the creation, we head off to the bedroom to get ready to go to Kobe's. No more than five minutes later, we come back out to put the dog away and lock up the house. But we have a problem.

Stanley decided to throw his paws up on the stove and devour half of the cake. Candles and all. After we got done throwing him outside, to obviously get rid of what he just ate, we went back in to see the destruction. He ate eight candles. Eight wax candles. Leaving me with only sixteen and leaving his stomach with something that's not going to look good on our living room floor tomorrow morning.

Shocked as we were, since he has never had human food his entire life, we can smile about it now and will have a great story to tell later on. Then the night gets even better as we finally lock the dog up and head to Kobe's. We're sandwiched between two sets of three people at our table. There's a divorced couple to our right, with their daughter, and an elderly couple to our left with their 90 year old uncle. How did we know, it was his birthday too.

After seeing four separate birthday celebrations going on in the first five minutes, I looked and Christi and told her in no way was she going to tell them that it was my birthday. She agrees and after we order, we grab a couple of drinks and get carded like we did back in the good ol' days. Not thinking about it, I nonchalantly hand over my license and the waitress says, "It's your birthday today?"

Long story short, me and the 90 year old war vet, who was doing Saki shots and speaking Japanese throughout the night, have a Polaroid of a night that we, or at least I, will never forget. Thanks for a great 24^th baby!

Cheers.