This weekend I celebrated my 46th birthday. Well perhaps "celebrated" is the wrong word. I don't think I have actually "celebrated" a birthday since my 21st... and I did that by passing out on my lawn.

My 10 year old daughter MJ drew this for me. I asked her to explain it to me. That is her on the left. She is mad because it is my birthday and I get to wear that crown. Apparently she has to wear the hat that says "loser" because it is not her birthday. I asked if I was a monkey. She said, "Kind of." But that is not my cut up tail or stink lines surrounding me. It is confetti! The ball of the exclamation point is also me. I love my kids!!!!

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that this weekend my family acknowledged that I had made it another year. I joke quite a bit about being an old man in steemit terms... but it definitely beats the alternative. There are only two choices: get older ... or get deader. So aside from the aching back, sore knees, bad eyes, and changes to what my stomach will tolerate, getting a year older really isn't so bad.

I am not normally the type of guy who likes extra attention on his birthday. I am kind of attention seeking year round so I figure I should play it cool on the one day that others typically set aside to attract attention to themselves. But this year is different. This year, I discovered steemit... and my kids know it.

In my house, it has gotten to the point that my kids don't think something is important unless I post about it on steemit. They have already assigned me characters to analyze, movies to review, obscure facts to relay and stories to tell. So today my kids asked, "Did you post about your birthday on steemit yet?" Clearly I had not but I promised them that I would.

So how does a 46 year old man "celebrate" a birthday?

It began with my children running into my bedroom at 7:44 AM (they let me sleep in), jumping on the bed and screaming, "It's your birthday! Wake up so we can give you your presents! Do you want pancakes with whip cream and sprinkles for breakfast?"

Allow me to translate that for you. Those sentences really mean, "It's a family member's birthday (it doesn't matter whose) so we get to go places and eat bad food all day. Wake up so that we can give you the presents we picked out and used your money to buy (So basically I bought them for myself). We want pancakes with whip cream and sprinkles even though you don't like them at all and have never asked for them in your life."

After wiping the sleep from my eyes and proceeding to the living room, my kids presented me with some really cool gifts. I was completely surprised and very pleased with how well they know me.

Just in case you are a new reader, my 10 year old daughter MJ and I have a running joke that she doesn't like me. It has grown from me running out of the room to laugh at her unintentionally mean comments to/about me to our full on embracing it and joking about it quite a bit (I know she loves me). Here is the card MJ picked out for me...

I was actually surprised the last word wasn't "farter".

My 12 year old son Timmy is a chip off the old block. I joke around with my kids quite a bit. I have an odd sense of humor and I believe it may have rubbed off on my son just a little. You can see this in his choice of card for me...

I guess I do share a lot of interests with a three year old.

Because my kids wanted to playfully embarrass me all day long, they required me to wear those birthday pins everywhere we went. Being the good sport I am, I obliged... at least until dinner.

Sporting my new "flare" I opened my gifts. My kids know me so well! If there was any doubt that I truly am the geek I portray myself as here on this platform, please allow my children's choice of gifts for me to dispel any misconceptions. I am a geek and I am proud!

They got me four awesome shirts and a really cool outdoor game.

The Star Wars ones are self explanatory. The Golden Girls one is an inside joke based on the Golden Girls appearance on the cartoon Teen Titans Go!

This one was obviously my favorite.

I will write a review of how well this can be played with kids ASAP... I'm not going to bounce my kids on it instead of a ball. I mean I am going to compete against my kids.

My wife, kids and I hung out and ate breakfast. They enjoyed my birthday pancakes while I had some fruit. (I needed to save myself for amy birthday dinner). After breakfast we hopped in the car to fulfill our family birthday tradition.

We always seek out some form of entertainment on our special days. Sometimes its an arcade, sometimes its Medieval Times, quite often it is a movie. My family and I love movies. Our love of movies was one of the things that attracted my wife and I to each other when we met. This year, the movie of choice was Despicable Me 3. Luckily it was only 90 minutes long and I enjoyed the previews (I'll write a full review later this week).

After the movie my wife surprised me by...

Dropping the kids off at grandma's house!

I adore my kids... but sometimes its nice to get some time with my wife.

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids and truly enjoy hanging out with them. But after a week in Canada with the entire family, it would be very nice for my wife and I to have some time to ourselves.

Because time was not an issue, we made the 45 minute trek to my favorite Italian restaraunt outside of Italy (the restaurant is not located just outside of Italy. It is my favorite food aside from the food in Italy... never mind). I am lucky enough to be surrounded by dozens of excellent restaurants, but BarTucci is special. It is worth traveling the extra miles. Located in a Northwestern neighborhood in Chicago, this restaurant is nothing special to look at. In fact, it is actually in a strip mall. But it is in a strip mall in a very old and traditionally Italian part of the city. As a result, BarTucci serves the most authentic and delicious Italian food I have ever eaten outside of Italy itself.

At the restaurant, I ate like... it was my birthday! I ordered two of my favorite appetizers, two dinners (for myself) and an extra appetizer to take home. I did share the appetizers with my wife and I only ate half of each dinner... but I definitely was aiming to...

I treated myself to two dinners!

By the time the waiter came with a giant complementary piece of tiramisu, I felt like this guy from Monty Python's Meaning of Life...

But I powered through and finished it anyway.

My wife and I ended the night by digesting our food while enjoying a glass of wine and watching another movie. Then we hung out for a while.

Wait. I think I actually did "celebrate" my birthday.

Thank you steemit and steemit community members for giving me an excuse to permanently record so many of the great memories that were created during my 46th year on the planet. This place and the friends I have made here are definitely one of the highlights of this year!

OK I have to run. I have a sudden and undeniable urge to go and yell at kids to get off my damn lawn!

Images (not taken by me) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6