Sans Snow In San Francisco

The Last Few Days In Snow City

Every December, Flagstaff transforms into a vast white winter wonderland, perfect for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts to take to the snow bowl for some powder action. Fully aware that we were not well-equipped for a day on the icy slopes sans ski suits and waterproof gloves, we settled for a more relaxed afternoon at one of the designated snow parks just minutes from the city.

Unfortunately, we got off to a late start that day. It certainly didn't help that while queuing for what was intended to be a snappy lunch at the KFC next door to our motel, somebody decided to upgrade his 2-piece combo into a full blown chicken buffet. I don't blame him. That's just how American fast food chains sink their claws into you. US$5.95 for 2 body parts with 2 choices of sides which we don't particularly fancy (coleslaw - ugh; whip - ugh; corn on cob - gets stuck in teeth; biscuit - ugh; fries - coming outta my ears already). US$7.95 for all-you-can-eat-chicken.

Frolicking in snow vs eating unlimited fried chicken in a nice warm restaurant. It was obvious what the one-man Kentucky Fan Club wanted. Plus, even the heartless Tin Man from Oz wouldn't have been able to turn down those pitiful pleas of, "Please, please, baby, can I have the buffet? Please?"

The late afternoon buffet, coupled with a 4.30pm sunset literally looming on the horizon, meant that we wouldn't make it to the snow park before it closed for the day.

We improvised by swinging into the open field down the road from our motel and turning it into our playground. The snow was fresh, thick (knee-deep in some parts!), soft and untouched. Well, no longer!

We made snow angels...

Guess who made the incredibly neat angel, and whose angel has a dead plant crawling up its skirt.

You know how kids in those Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strips build snowmen by trundling a snowball around the snow field until its as big as a person? Well cartoons lie!

We tried piling the snow up and shaping it into a ball to form our snowman's body. We couldn't get the snow to stick and stay in place. The powdery slopes just kept crumbling. Needless to say, we didn't even get round to creating a head for our snowman. The snow soaked through our woolen gloves, jeans and sneakers and numbed us from inside out. I was on the fast track to turning into a snowman instead of building one.

It's funny how frozen fingers can be stone-numb and yet feel unbelievably painful. In the end, we gave up and simply tossed handfuls of snow into Dan's buttoned-up jacket. We managed to get some semblance of a lumpy crooked torso.

The snow clung to us, creating a frozen layer over our clothes, which slowly melted and soaked us in cold water.

Project Snowman 2 wasn't much of a success. In fact, our snowman just looked like a bigger less-cute version of our baby snowhutt in Project Snowman 1, which we did last April in Yosemite.

Dan refused to acknowledge the two snow-things we created were the same. According to the man, our snowman-building skills have improved because now, we've added snow-aliens to our repertoire. Talk about skills upgrading.

(Note: I just learnt the secret of snowman-building from a friend a few days ago. You need to have a flask of hot water on hand and sprinkle the water over the snow as you shape it, to melt the icy crystals and set them in place. As Dan suggested, hot pee should work too, if you don't mind having yellow snow-chinaman.)

Blue Peter is up for grabs for the next Alien vs Predator movie.

The sun set not long after, turning fields of snow into fields of gold.

Bye bye snowy place

Fleeing Flagstaff...

And from the fields of gold, we headed back to Phoenix for our flight to the Golden State.

Enough of savouring the Golden State from a Tetra-Pak. We're off to California!

HOLA SAN FRANCISCO!

It was our second time in San Francisco on this trip. We loved it when we first arrived in the city in April. We found a new reason to love it more this time round - it doesn't snow here. We stayed at the Travelodge on Market Street again. At about US$30 per night for AA members, it was once again the best deal out there. Some of the rooms were under renovation in April last year and we were pleased to be assigned a newly refurbished room. We giggled when we saw the same crusty old man at the reception who roared my name out with gusto on our last visit, "Tan YYYYYEEEEEE Lin!" We snickered into our hands like before when he thundered, "Tan YYYYYEEEEEE Lin!" for the whole of America to hear when we checked in. He was alot nicer to us this time, alot less crusty. Which was nice.

We love the motel's location on Market Street. The F-line streetcar which trundles down Market Street all the way to Fisherman's Wharf stops right outside the motel. It's also within walking distance to the shops on Market and the Orpheum Theatre. Which was absolutely fabulous because...

All happy and smug that the snow didn't follow him from Flagstaff to Frisco

...we were in town to catch a musical at the theatre - WICKED!

All exited to be finally watching Broadway's Biggest Blockbust...

The star character whom the show was named after

I've been wanting to watch Wicked since 2008, when I was in Melbourne on a work trip and chanced upon a theatre that was showing it. My CEO mentioned that it was a really good musical but I didn't get a chance to watch it then. Another chance passed us by in New York City in May - the tickets on Broadway were sold out for weeks.

I was pretty thrilled when I found a used copy of the book for US$3 at a bookstore in the Florida Keys a few weeks later, and made a mental note then to return to San Francisco to catch the song-and-dance version of the story before we flew home.

People were all dressed up for the theatre. Well, we wore the best we had.

Following the not-so-yellow carpeted road to the Land of Oz

Our verdict of the musical: Definitely worth catching. Funny, witty and an interesting narrative of how the Wicked Witch of the West got her title. The show doesn't follow the written version completely, which may be a good thing, given the traditional story's unhappy (unhappy for the witch, but not for Dorothy and her friends) ending. Unfortunately, the songs were immensely forgettable. I can only remember one key tune from the song "Defying Gravity" and that's only because the song title is printed on the back of Dan's souvenir t-shirt.

Sitting on the plush blood-red theatre seats, it was hard to believe that just a week before, we were roughing it out on a volcano in Central America and traipsing down the spine of the Andes a few months ago. And now there we were, treating ourselves to a Broadway musical.

I don't think I will ever stop counting our blessings.

Mead Me There

This has to be one of the hardest entries to do.

Cos other than taking a few photos of a lovely sunset at Lake Mead - the largest reservoir in the United States, we pretty much didn't do anything else here. So it's kinda hard to write about nothing.

Since I'm failing miserably at entertaining our readers, I'll at least try to pass off some geeky facts about Lake Mead as a blog post.

Lake Mead was formed in 1936 as a result of the damming of the Colorado River by the great Hoover Dam. It stretches 180km behind the giant concrete wall and across 2 states - Nevada and Arizona.

With a surface area of 640 square kilometres, the reservoir is almost the size of Singapore (700 sq km.) Just imagine an entire city sitting within all that water with cars, trains and expressways running across its surface. If you're Singaporean, that imaginary picture makes the little red dot you're living on seem even more puny.

If you hail from a country which, when placed on a map, isn't entirely obliterated by a mere letter in its name, then the imagery won't get you very excited (see, we get a kick out of living on an itsy bitsy teeny weenie island!)

Since it really wasn't possible to visit all 35 cubic kilometres of Lake Mead, we just popped in for a visit along the Nevada end of the lake. With traffic heading towards the Hoover Dam at the pace of a sickly snail, it took what felt like forever to reach the shore. By then, the brilliant patch of blue we spotted from our car had turned into a pink pool under the 4.30pm sunset.

Blue for the early birds; pink for the slow coaches

Boats docked at the marina. Too dark and cold for a late afternoon sail at 4.30pm

No, I wasn't peeing into the long grass when taking this pic. Just for the records.

Clouds sweeping across the sky turn a darker pink

Kungfu Panda's not happy with the slacker sun who refuses to stay out beyond 5pm. Hiii-yah!

As for the Hoover Dam - nah, didn't visit it. We managed to sneak a peak while driving through the area. The preview of the grey monstrosity couldn't entice us to join the line of cars heading for the giant concrete slab.

And with that, it was back to Phoenix and on the flight to our next destination....

...SAN FRANCISCO! (again)

The Big Crack

Poor Dan.

During the earlier stages of trip-planning, we had envisioned a week-long birthday celebration for him spent lounging on a Mexican beach at Club Med Cancun, surrounded by sexy bikini-clad women and sand between his... toes.

In the end, we had to give the sunny Yucatan a miss. Damn those budget constraints.

Look what the poor guy ended up with as a sorry replacement:

Fields of snow

Once again, poor Dan *cue sympathetic "awwww" from reader* (yes, that means you. Do it. Please?)

This is a guy who doesn't sleep with the air-conditioning on back home (and by default, cured me of my nightly air-con habit), hates the cold, doesn't own any decent winter clothing, and has a like-hate ('love' is too strong a word) relationship with snow.

Fresh from South America, the cold treatment we received in Ushuaia was not yet a distant-enough memory for us to welcome snowy days again with new eyes. It didn't help that Guatemala was uncharacteristically (or in the words of our hosts "crazily") cold when we were there.

We thought we had planned an unflappable Great Winter Escape by heading to Arizona in December, and that the great red deserts of Southwest USA would kindly offer us some respite from the wintry white blanket falling over most of North America. Plus, since the price of some Mexican sunshine wasn't within reach, why not treat Dan to a visit to a World Heritage Site instead? Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon would make a memorable birthday experience indeed.

Well, we learnt the hard way that:

(1) The reference to the south in "southwest" isn't exactly a heavyweight when the region located in North America.

(2) The Grand Canyon is located at an elevation of 2,134m above sea level - high enough to catch more than a few snowflakes during winter.

On the bright side, it would definitely be easier to find some sweet birthday treats in Arizona than it was hunting down a slice of cake for my birthday in the Atacama.

I was well prepared to see a smattering of snow at the top levels of the Grand Canyon and maybe in Flagstaff, the gateway to the national park. I only realised that we may have gotten more than what we bargained for when my friend Dawn mentioned on my Facebook page that it was the perfect time to go skiing in Flagstaff....

I certainly wasn't expecting this much snow:

Bbbrrrrrrrrr!

Nevertheless, we took advantage of the blue skies that day to visit the Grand Canyon - affectionately termed "The Big Crack" by Dan. He enthusiastically demonstrated the use of the term, "On my birthday, my wife is going to show me a Big Crack." Ha.ha.ha. What.Ever. Luckily for him, birthday boys get to enjoy special privileges, which include immunity against getting pulverized by the wife for making lewd jokes at her expense.

Gazing over The Big Crack

At 26km-wide at the maximum, the Grand Canyon isn't the widest in the world. I had always thought that it was the deepest, with walls stretching 1.83km into the bowels of the earth, but it isn't. That title goes to a gorge in Nepal.

Nevertheless, the Grand Canyon is undeniably wide and very deep. Stretching hundreds of kilometers into the horizon, it's sheer size is visually overwhelming. Gazing over the South Rim and literally seeing no end in sight, I found it hard to wrap my brain around how massive this single canyon really is. It's like looking out into the ocean but instead of water, you see rock. It was so unreal, it literally looked fake, like a painted backdrop in a photo studio.

People looking so very tiny in comparison with the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon was formed millions of years ago by the simultaneous uplift action of the Colorado Plateau and the downward carving forces of the mighty Colorado River. From where we were, the powerful river was a mere blue-green squiggly line and the roads leading to the bottom of the canyon looked like limp spaghetti.

Obviously, if you go over the edge, you have a really long way to fall before you literally hit rock bottom after about 1.4km. If you want more time in the air, jump from the North Rim - it's higher.

No, seriously, please don't. The very first drop from either rim WILL kill you. Bouncing down the canyon wall till you reach the base is only an added thrill.

Some 600 people have died in the Grand Canyon since the 1870s. 53 fatalities were due to accidental falls. 48 deaths by suicide. 23 as a result of homicide (!!!!!!!) The rest through plane and helicopter crashes, flash floods, dehydration, drownings and other factors.

I decided to take the advice of a wise little elementary school student whose haiku graced the exhibit at the park visitor centre:

The Canyon is deep
I stay away from the edge
I obey the rule

Oi! You! Obey the rule!!!!

Amazingly, we had picked the best weather to make our visit. The minimum temperature that day was a whopping 3 degrees Celcius, falling to minus 7 at night.

The day before, it was minus 3 at the max, and minus 9 at night.

Prediction for the following day was 1 degree max and minus 8 at the minimum.

We made a good call on the weather, huh? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I've said it twice and I'll say it again: Brrrrrrrrrr!!!!

While we were bitterly, bitterly cold that day, the freezing temperatures didn't stop us from enjoying the spectacular views (before they were totally blocked by a thick curtain of falling snow.) The cold only drove us into each other's arms more tightly! Awwwwww.....

Celebrating our birthdays with each other in a year of adventures!

So yeah, even though he was freezing most of the time, this lucky fella received many a cuddle on his birthday and is thus not that poor a thing.

But thanks for the sympathy anyway. (You can stop feeling sorry for him now.)

Onwards To The Red Rock State

Over the Christmas season, we hopped and skipped and flew and drove and made our way from Guatemala to Florida and onwards to Arizona.

It was our first Christmas celebration away from the family and thus the quietest one ever. We spent Christmas dinner in bed in a motel near the Miami airport with a large pizza that was delivered straight to our room and a heavy dose of American TV. Okay, maybe it wasn't that quiet an event - the Muppets and kooky characters from Family Guy can be quite a rambunctious bunch.

On Boxing Day, we flew to Phoenix. Never again are we flying American Airlines.

Reasons (and really valid ones too):

(1) You have to pay for your first checked bag. Yes, the first bag - you know, the one where you put all your travel necessities; the one that almost all other airlines in the world (even those hailing from countries worse off than Great Uncle Sam's mega-continent) let you check in for free?

(2) You get a drink (hooray) but you don't get any snacks. Not even peanuts. Those are for sale. Or you can opt to buy an all-American snack - the American Airlines Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie.

(Ginormous American Lady seated next to Dan along the aisle had no qualms ordering that. Dan waited till she had finished chowing down on her American-sized snack before he asked if he could get pass her to visit the washroom. She said, "Sure!" and sucked in her belly by a few invisible inches, which she thought would give him enough space to stroll through onto the aisle. He stared at her in disbelief. She finally got the hint and heaved herself up from her seat to let him pass.)

(3) There is no personal entertainment onboard the flight.

(4) Should you wish to watch the movie showing on the tiny screens lining the aisle, you have to purchase earphones at US$2 a piece.

Before you say that we're being total spoiled brats and are too ngiao (stingy) to pay for anything onboard a flight, we have to point out that other local airlines have managed to provide almost all the above cabin comforts at no additional cost to paying passengers. And their airfares are comparable to or cheaper than AA's too.

Our favourite local airline is Jetblue. The fares are cheap, you check in your first bag for free, you get a drink and your choice of 2 snacks from a snack basket, you get a personal entertainment screen where you can watch local TV channels and cable onboard, and you can plug your own earphones into the entertainment set.

We also really like Southwest. They only lose out to Jetblue in the in-flight entertainment arena but they make up for their lack of fun by being really nice and letting you check in 2 bags for free.

So what is AA's excuse for being so crappy huh?

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We didn't do much in Phoenix. Instead, we hit the road the very next morning and drove ourselves to Sedona, just a couple of hours from Arizona's state capital. After spending 7 months being car-less in the Caribbean and Latin America (except for the occasional golf cart and 1-day rentals), it felt really good to be in control behind the wheel again.

Sedona is a small town set amongst chunky blocks of red mountain. While Sedona sits on the edge of the Colorada Plateau - the same one which the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon sit on - unlike the latters' red rock wilderness, it is inhabited. And by really kooky residents too. We saw business signs offering palm and tarot readings, 'new age' products (like exotic incense and twangy music CDs) and the occasional tour promising UFO-sightings *cue twilight zone music*

We visited the Red Rock State Park, a small nature reserve in Sedona with lots of beautiful scenery to offer. Although declared a public park in 1991, Red Rock is not slated as a national park. It's relatively small proportions of red rock features cannot hold a candle to the grandeur of Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, both which we had visited last year in Utah.

The beauty of Red Rock lies in its intimate setting and quiet nature trails. There are no carloads of tourists pouring in throughout the day. No free park shuttles that ferry large groups of camera-toting visitors from viewpoint to viewpoint. At Red Rock, you can almost have the whole park to yourself.

Taking in a lungful of desert air

It's the desert - it's always sunny

And yet, you can still see signs of a desert winter

Evidence that the temperatures drop below freezing at night

Pretty patterns form when a stream ices over. A passer-by saw me so enthralled by something on the ground and called out to ask me what I had found there. Nothing much - just some ice!

Following the trail to the lookout point

These bright orange rocks are 250 million years old. The red hue is due to the high levels of iron in the sandstone.

Cacti dot the landscape throughout Arizona

Sedona's dramatic red rock landscape

Sadly, Red Rock State Park is slated for closure in June this year due to lack of state funding. The same fate awaits 12 other state parks in Arizona. Only the 9 parks that generate the most revenue in order to fund the parks' operations will remain open.

For Red Rock, it means that members of the public will no longer be allowed to enter the nature reserve.

And with its closure, there goes yet another little sanctuary for people to escape to. We are indeed very blessed to have experienced the quiet magic of Red Rock before it gets neglected and eventually, forgotten.

In 2010, Yi Lin Promises To...

I've never felt so far behind everyone else before. Friends in Singapore started sending out New Year greetings 15 hours ago and are already halfway through 1 Jan 2010.

Here, we're watching the countdown at Times Square 'live on CNN and waiting for New York City to roll into 2010 in 15 minutes time. Then we wait another 2hrs for 1 Jan to arrive in the Southwest.

I can't remember what my New Year resolutions for 2009 were. I think I didn't make any for the past 2 years. If I did, it must have been to bite the bullet and embark on this trip of a lifetime, and complete it safe, sound, happy and fulfilled. This year, I have our blog to remind me - word for word - my hopes and wishes for 2010 that I pen down tonight.

Far away from the distractions of work duties on New Year's Eve, which basically involved alot of running around while silently praying that Singapore's countdown event at Marina Bay goes smoothly without a hitch, I spent some time on overnight bus rides in South America and more recently, on flights and long car rides in the US, mulling over my 2010 resolutions.

Before getting down to penning those resolutions, I would prefer, really, to reflect upon what a great year 2009 has been for us. But since we've spent almost the whole of 2009 planning and fulfilling this trip of our dreams - and we're not quite done yet - I'll save my reflections for later, when it comes to an end. Believe me, 19 American states and 19 other countries later, we will have alot to say.

Very simply, for 2010, I hope to:

(1) Bring my fitness and health to a higher level

This involves:

(i) Working out at the gym twice a week and doing yoga, swimming and blading at least once a week for each activity.

(ii) Completing a 10km run in a outdoor running event

(iii) Bringing my weight down to 50kg and maintaining it (at least there will be no more IHOP pancake stacks and $2.50 B&J pints to get in the way of this resolution!)

(2) Cook For Others

But first, I'll need twice-monthly cooking lessons from my parents to learn some of the family recipes (hear ye, hear ye Mum & Dad!) Then, it's on to contributing dishes towards family gatherings, and organising get-togethers with friends at our place (or anyone else who would like to volunteer theirs!) with food cooked by yours truly.

(3) Improve Upon An Old Skill

This would be dancing, which I really miss. Picking up ballet again would be lovely but I'm looking forward to exploring other fields of dance. Gonna check with my friend Eleanor who's teaching at a dance school back home on options.

(4) Learn A New Skill

This would be oil painting! I'm planning to sign up for art classes and complete at least 1 piece that's good enough to be framed up and displayed on our walls at home.

(5) Plan The Next Big Thing

Taking a year off work to travel the Americas has been one big Life Project. With that done and dusted soon, I'll be on the lookout for another grand scheme to work towards achieving. Sure, there are more places to travel - East Africa, Scandinavia, The Galapagos and all those beautiful diving spots in the Asia Pacific - but long-term travel is going to be off the cards for awhile. I'm toying with a few big ideas - working and living abroad may be one of them. Running my very own hostel/guesthouse - definitely. Once I've decided on what it will be, the next step is to chart out a plan towards achieving it.

Of course, somewhere in there are plans to start a family, short vacations overseas, and setting out milestones to achieve for work when I return to the office in March.

2010 rolled into New York City a few minutes ago. I'm still patiently waiting for our turn to ring in the new year in snowy Arizona. In the meanwhile...

Happy New Year to all our readers. May all of you be blessed with a fruitful and fulfilling year, chockful of love, joy and dreams that come true.

*HUGS*

Go 2010!

P.S. And to those who bought copies of our GO Calendars, thank you very much once again for your support - and remember to use those calendars!

The Great Cold American Birthday

We're not yet done with our posts on Brazil but I'm jumping the gun here abit. And I've a good reason to - Dan celebrated his (thirty) fourth birthday yesterday!

As mentioned in my birthday post, it's really hard to make any detailed birthday plans in advance because we're not quite sure where we will be on a certain day. While I managed to pinpoint our arrival in Flagstaff, Arizona, in time for Dan's birthday and New Year's Eve, I could only make vague plans for the day itself - and no, they didn't involve any surprises at all. We didn't have the advantage of being in the office and away from each other this year to make secret phone calls to restaurants or do secret shopping during lunch time for gifts.

So the only surprise element for both our birthdays this year was location location location - and we couldn't have celebrated our big days in two more different places. Dan was nice enough to bring me to a dry, warm place earlier in October - nevermind that it was on the driest spot on earth, the Atacama Desert.

And what did the poor guy get in return? A cold wet snowy birthday in Arizona, in the height of winter!

That's not a white studio backdrop by the way

I had planned for us to visit the Grand Canyon - which he affectionately terms as The Big Crack - on his birthday, thinking that it would be the highlight of our time in Arizona. After all, it was pretty much the only thing we came to see here. It was a good thing that we decided to go a day earlier instead - it would have been wrong to ask the Birthday Boy to give up his warm possum-fur gloves cos his wife insisted on wearing her pretty but useless mitts which soaked up tonnes of icy-cold snow.

With the grand feature done and dusted on 29 December, what were we going to do for Dan's birthday? Think, wifey, think....

Well, we went back to basics and headed out for a simple brunch-movie-dinner date! While that may have been nothing special if we were celebrating back home, it's a pretty big deal if you haven't been watching movies on big screen in the last 9 months.

First stop - to IHOP to fuel up against the neverending snowfall.

All psyched up at the thought of birthday pancakes!

Strawberry New York Cheesecake Pancakes!

Since I'm the only one whose around to sing Dan a birthday song 'live' this year, I felt great responsibility to keep singing throughout the day on behalf of everyone back home. Thankfully, the staff at IHOP stepped in to help!

Their version of Happy Birthday wasn't quite the traditional one though. It was sung to a different tune altogether and started with "I don't know but I've been told, somebody is getting old...."

Well, it sounded good anyway!

The happy man enjoying the sight of a line of chorus girls belting out a birthday song just for him

Birthday sundae on the house!

It's his birthday so he can take a photo with our pretty waitress if he wants to!

Totally stuffed from our pancake brunch, we took a walk down memory lane and indulged in a few arcade games together, something which we used to do while dating. We tried out Dance Dance Revolution just for laughs - although I couldn't find the breath to laugh much after scuttling around on the platform like a drunken spider on Speed. Never, ever choose the crazily-fast Japanese songs on DDR.

I say hip, hop, a hip hip hop, a hoppy hop hop, hip hip hip hop. (Okay, I've no idea what made me write that)

For my birthday, Dan brought me to the moon - in the form of Valle de la Luna in Chile. I couldn't let him just stay on earth on his birthday, could I? I wanted to bring him to another planet as well, specifically, Pandora. So it was to the Harkins Theatres for the movie of the year - Avatar in 3D! Being used to choosing our seats when watching movies back home, we weren't used to the free-seating system in the cinemas here. We went in a tad too late - all the good seats at the back were taken up. We survived in the 3rd row from the front nevertheless. We got to keep our 3D glasses, which we're going to personalise with blingblings (okay, at least my pair will be shiny) and tote them around for all the 3D movies back in Singapore (can't wait to watch Alice In Wonderland already!)

All ready to board the space shuttle to Pandora (whaddya mean that's just the cinema?! Rubbish!)

Surprisingly, all that space and time travel didn't make Dan too hungry. So we hung around Barnes and Noble for awhile (finally, a bookstore that isn't filled with only Spanish or Portuguese books) then went to find some ribs for the birthday boy to gnaw on at Chilis.

Baby got Back! And some boneless buffalo wings too.

My husband asked me to look pretty for a photo. So I obliged.

Then came another round of birthday songs and complimentary cake, this time from the Chili's staff! (I took a video but it's taking forever to upload - check back here for the footage soon.)

After note: it's HERE!



(yessss, you did hear him say "looks like a giant nipple" at the end before he proceeded to tongue the ice-cream)

It was a HUGE warm molten chocolate cake!

Pulverized.

Yeah. It was a really simple birthday celebration. A far cry from last year when I gathered his friends and drove him blindfolded to his surprise birthday party at MacDonald's. And catered to his Jedi fantasies by presenting him with a really cool Lightsaber (which he promptly used to poke his wife with.)

But a very special birthday celebration nevertheless.

Dannie letting you know that he enjoyed his birthday thoroughly!

Happy Birthday baby. May we have many more happy years celebrating our birthdays together.

I love you.