Jamie’s Birthday was yesterday and he decided that for his big day he wanted to do whatEVER he felt like doing. No plans made in advance, just to wake up and see how the day felt. This is not how I operate. At all. I am a planner, I make decisions really quickly and usually stick with them. Jamie, on the other hand likes to hem and haw. He loves the options, the discussion, the research and to savor the last minute decision….and it drives me NUTS!!
For his birthday, Jamie asked that I indulge him in his love of the non-plan. I agreed that YES he should get to do whatever he wanted to do, taking whatever timeline he’d like to decide and that I would do it all along with him. It was a pretty great day, actually. A more relaxing day than we’ve had in a while. We slept in, went to Jamie’s Aunt & Uncle’s house for breakfast, went to a fundraising event, went out for Middle-Eastern food, and THEN we went to see the Christmas train!
The L in Chicago has been putting on a Christmas train for a number of years, but Jamie had never ridden it and I had never even seen it…so he decided that yesterday was the day.
I was so amazed by how many people were waiting for the train, and then again by how exciting it was to see the train pull up! I was kind of cynical about the whole thing because really, it’s just an L train, all decked out… BUT Everyone was so excited when the train pulled up, then the elves got off and handed out candy canes, a sopping wet Santa (it was raining yesterday) was actually pretty jolly and cheerful, and Christmas music was playing from speakers inside and out. It was pretty great!
The only weird thing was that Santa kept calling Jamie ‘little guy’. Weird, right? Especially if you know Jamie…he’s not really a little guy. Was Santa making fun of us? I hope not.

We finished the day by with a movie at home while the snowstorm was starting…what a cozy winter Birthday in Chicago : )