Shawn's Birthday. . . sorta

Shawn's birthday was almost 2 months ago but we just last week used the gift I gave him so I figure it's an appropriate time to talk about it :)

For starters, Shawn's parents visited last month. Visiting him for his birthday was Chuck's surprise gift to Barb for her birthday. So they came out for that weekend, and the first thing they wanted to do after arriving here was, naturally, go to Target- a well-known favorite San Francisco past time. But the trip was a success as you can see here- Shawn and Chuck in their new Target Top Hats.












We had a great weekend with them- we went to see Teatro Zinnzanni, which I have to say, I wasn't super excited about; I always see advertisements for it when I'm in tourist areas but I've never heard of anyone I know actually going to it. It sorta looked like a less impressive version of Cirque de Soliel, accompanied with what I could only expect to be sub-par food. But from the pictures I thought his parents might like it . . . . and it turns out it was wonderfully entertaining! It was in fact less impressive than Cirque de Soliel :) but it was also quite different- lots more acting involved, and funny. So yeah, that was great!

We also went to dinner with Jason on Shawn's b-day; Jason hates it when I take pictures of him. Occasionally, I respect his wishes, but I just couldn't this day because it was the day after he FINALLY finished his PhD. I think it's been about 13 years or something- clearly a reason for celebratory pictures.


Ok- now fast forward six weeks, I had given Shawn tickets to see John Prine in Carmel for his birthday and last week was the concert. We made a mini vacation out of it and went down to Monterey Wednesday morning to go to the aquarium. I love that aquarium! Sometimes, I wish we lived in Monterey just so we could go there more.

The otters are always my favorite (it's hard to get good pictures of them though). They totally remind me of Tatanka! Seriously, doesn't that just look so much like him?


The special exhibit right now is the seahorses, and they were AMAZING. My pictures don't do it justice at all- you have to go see it for yourself! It was truly beautiful.




So itty bitty.


These were the most fantastic of all- I seriously couldn't believe my eyes! If I were ever to write a fairytale, all the characters would be versions of these guys.


No seahorses in this picture, but Shawn is pretty amazing too :)





The jellies always come in a close second to the otters.




After the aquarium we went to dinner at our favorite little spot in Carmel and then onto the concert. And the concert was so so great. If you add me and Shawn together, our ages would probably equal the age of the average person there- so yeah, we apparently have a really. . . refined taste in music :)
Anyway, I loved John Prine, but the really exciting part was opener Josh Ritter. Heather has always been a huge fan but I never knew anything about him until this night, and now I'm kinda mad at Heather for hoarding him :) . . . Pretty much an instant and shameless crush. I bought 4 albums there and have listened to them almost NON-STOP for the last week, and every other song is "my favorite".
But I think it was this song that stole my heart. If it hadn't of been Shawn's birthday gift, I might have left him that night and tried to latch myself onto Josh's tour bus.