The Best Birthday Ever!

Last Saturday was my 24th birthday...Yes...On April Fool's Day! Friday, the night before, we were up late with Mike and Renelle, my friend Billy and his girlfriend watching one of the most lame movies ever...The Transporter 2. It had some cool scenes, but was very unrealistic. Anyways, the main point is that we were out very late. Then, Brice informed me that I needed to be ready to go at 8:00 a.m. the next morning for my birthday. WOWZERS! "Okay," I said. He was gracious and changed it to 8:15 a.m. I agreed to be ready, although I had no idea where we were going, or what we were doing. So, I of course was running late, and I think we left around 8:30 or so. So, we got in the car and started driving..."But, where is he taking me?" I thought.

A few minutes into the drive, Brice handed me a piece of notebook paper. I started reading it. The first side of the sheet was a birthday poem Brice wrote for me. It was very cute and thoughtful. Then, he told me to look on the other side. To my amazement, there was a 3 by 5 puzzle chart that had blanks for me to fill in. All of the fill-in blanks were numbers. The questions were like these: "Emilie normally wears __ rings on her fingers," "Emilie has had __ real boyfriends," and "Emilie and Brice have been to foreign countries __ times in a group together," etc. They were very cute trivia statements about me, and or us as a couple. Then, each row in the chart represented one of the 5 letters in the word of our destination. In order to figure out the puzzle, I was required to look at the poem he wrote me on the first side of the paper. The first column signified the line of the poem, the second column was the word to look at, and the third column represented the letter of the word to look at. (And everyone says we women are detail-oriented!) The first letter turned out to be P. The second I, third S, fourth M, and fifth O. Which turned out to be PISMO BEACH!!!!! I hadn't been there in so many years. Some of my last memories were camping as a young girl with my family at Pismo Coast Village. It rocked!

So, for the drive up there, which was pretty long, Brice said that I could rest if I wanted to, since we were up so late the night before. So....I did! It was great. I still didn't know what we were going to do in Pismo, but I was very excited to go. When we got into Pismo, Brice pulled out another piece of notebook paper. This time it was a clue. It listed a couple of clues, then I had to guess where it was. The first statement was, "_______ splash, I was taking a bath...." and the second one, "We have a famous one of these in Saugus that is very old." It turned out to be Splash Cafe!

I had never heard of the place, but as you can see, there was a very long line out the door to get into the retaurant. It turned out to have the best clam chowder I have ever tasted. We shared clam chowder in a bread bowl, and an order of fish and chips. It was delicious.

After lunch at Splash Cafe, we walked along the main street, and walked on the pier. The tide was pretty high, and the weather was gorgeous. (According to the weahter man, it was supposed to be raining!)

Next, we took a walk on the pier, where Brice bought me a necklace and bracelet set. It's made out of shells, and it's so cool. Brice kept looking at his watch. I continuously thought, "I wonder what we're doing after this?" So, finally Brice said, "Okay, we better head out."

In the car, he had me read another message on a piece of notebook paper. It had antoher clue, which said something about looking back at the clue on the previous chart. I still wasn't quite sure what we were doing. Brice ended up taking me to:



None other than Pacific Dunes Ranch. Brice made one of my lifetime goals and dreams come true. He took me horseback riding on the beach!!! Oh my gosh, is he awesome or what? It was a little bit emotional for me, since my horse Blackie died on Christmas Eve. This was the first time I had ridden since that. It was so nice to ride again. I can't explain how special this was for me. Brice did an amazing job of making me feel so loved, like a princess. It was awesome. Here's me on cowboy!

I had the time of my life!
After we went riding, we went back to the main street and did some window-shopping and dinking around. We stopped at a candy shop and had some treats, and then we headed back home. After that we went home to go to Greenhouse Cafe to meet family and friends. Thank You Everyone for making my day special!