On a scale of 1 to 10 ....

... this past weekend was a 12. Seriously, no exaggeration. And it had nothing to do with the presents I got, although I received some awesome things! It was a birthday weekend for me, and a relatively big birthday too. The big 60. When I turned 50, I had months of anxiety and dread before the date actually came. It was bad enough that I  sought professional counseling to help me get through it. So, in comparison, 60 was a piece of cake (although now that I think about it, I never did have any birthday cake. Hmmmmm). I wasn't anxious, I didn't obsess about my age - nuttin - like it really was no big deal, a non-event.

Johnnie asked me several weeks ago what I wanted to do for my birthday. We're having a big celebration of my 60th and John's 60th (he turns 60 in 2011) this coming February by taking all of our kids on a cruise so that's the big celebration. But birthdays are a big deal to me -- I try to celebrate everyone's birthday as specially as I can. While lots of holidays are enjoyable, birthdays are unique and celebrate the individual as a person -- and that means a lot to me. I send cards to lots of people to remember their birthdays and in our close circle of family and friends, I make as big a fuss as I can for each person's birthday.

So when Johnnie asked, the first thing that popped into my mind was to go miniature golfing and ride go-karts. There's a place in our area that has both activities on site along with a video game arcade. We (Johnnie and me) went there on Sunday with Erin, Mike, Emily and Lucy and we had a blast. It was at least 90 degrees in the shade and we were thankful the place had some shade while we played miniature golf. The little girls did reasonably well at miniature golf. After our game, we took refuge inside for a while to rehydrate and cool off.

For go-karting, Lucy rode with Mike and Emily rode with me. Erin and Johnnie had single karts. I've never ridden in or driven a go-kart before in my life. Emily laughed the entire ride as did Lucy. It was a blast. Hotter'n Billy Blazes but just a blast. As a first-timer (Erin was too) I thought the karts went plenty fast. Johnnie and Mike both were disappointed they didn't go faster. Figures!

Then we went inside again and got 200 tokens that we divided up among the six of us to play the games. It wasn't my most favorite part of the day (go karting was everybody's hands down favorite) it was still fun and it was great to get inside and cool off for a while. Everybody left there grinning from ear to ear.Afterwards we came back to our house where the little girls watched Cars and the grown ups napped. We had a picnic supper on the deck, then went out for ice cream. Yum. No diets this weekend! 

On Monday, Johnnie and I took SUNNNNY for a ride and then out to dinner. Another 90+ degree day. It was so hot ("how hot was it?") that we stopped along the way on our ride and put SUNNNNY's convertible top up so we could run the air conditioning more efficiently and cool off. Blessed cool air.

Anyway, it was a perfect birthday and, while I don't remember the details of each of my foregoing 59 birthdays, this one ranked right up there as being just a perfect time.