Happy Birthday Heather!

Yesterday was my birthday. Julia made a lovely marble cake with chocolate icing and little chocolate hearts. We had that with the kids midday.

Around 5:30, Gabrielle and Stuart came over to watch the kids for us, at 5:58, we all took a shot of feigling, and at 6pm our limo arrived.

Yep, our limo. See, at Chris's birthday, it was when we'd all ordered a drink with dinner that someone asked "Who is the driver tonight?" And noone wanted to volunteer. At that moment I said "For my birthday, we'll get a limo and it won't matter!" So that's what we did.

It was an 8 passenger limo, we started out with Chris, Julia, Dirk and I. On the way in to Duesseldorf we picked up Bethany and Karyn, then proceeded to the city to get dinner and drinks. (We did allow Brady and Keira to go in and see it before we left.)

We had wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse, but as the place was available for lease... we were unable to go there. We found another steakhouse in the Altstadt, which was delicious! It is called Maredo.

After a lovely meal, we attempted to meet up with Susi and some others from school. At this point, our directional and... conversational skills were being tried (thanks to the champagne, pina coladas and whatever Susi was drinking!)

She was at a bar called Siam. When we asked for directions, she said "Next to Mcloughlin's, and near anaconda" When asking my group where Anaconda was, Dirk replied with a hearty "In my pants!" followed by roaring laughter.

So our group of 6 meandered through the altstadt, and finally found Siam. (But not Susi) So another call was in order, and Susi had changed venue to Anaconda. We decided that Anaconda was too smoky, so we went to Mcloughlins for a couple of drinks, and dancing. OH! On the way to Mcloughlins, we saw Francois (A french teacher from our school) and met his friend Igor (An English teacher in the French school) and they joined our bunch.

After a couple shots, (Slippery nipples in the irish bar are made with baileys and ouzo- UCK!) and a couple ciders for Julia, we decided it was time to move venue again. Just as we chose to leave, Susi showed up with Rory! (Her friend from Ireland) We walked down the street to "Chillout" which was labeled "An american bar"... but in fact was a hookah bar. We were mesmerized by the whole hookah ritual, and chose not to take part. We each had one more dirnk before meeting the limo again at 12:15.

We dropped Bethany and Karyn off again, and got to Wegberg around 1:30am. After a little conversation with Stuart and Gabrielle, off we went to bed. It was a very fun, relaxing time with friends that made for a great birthday!