Last Friday I turned twenty-eight and Paul and I went out to dinner at Dempsey's to celebrate.  I'm sure I've blogged (can that really be turned into a verb?) about Dempsey's before - it's this great little microbrewery restaurant situated on the riverfront in downtown Petaluma.  It's fun to go there because you can park downtown and then walk across the river on a little footbridge (more on that later), and the scenery is particularly charming after dark as they have strung lights in the trees lining the riverbank which dance on the water's surface.  The restaurant itself has an outdoor patio overlooking this whole scene and even though it was drizzling that night we chose to sit out there.  It was a wise choice too because with the exception of one other couple sitting on the far opposite end of the patio, we had dinner to ourselves. Thanks to an umbrella over the table the rain didn't bother us either.  It was a very nice, memorable evening out.  It was made a little bit more memorable on the walk back to our car as well.  That quaint wooden footbridge, the first rain of the season, a slight downward slope, and my flats proved to be a rotten combination.  With seemingly no warning, my feet slipped out from under me and I fell really hard on my rear end.  It totally knocked the wind out of me, but I regained my composure quickly.  It was actually quite comedic.  Knocked down but not defeated, Paul dusted me off and we went home and ate huge slices of birthday cake.  It was truly a joyful, memorable evening.

P.S. You might think that Paul and I look like we are totally wasted in the picture above, but I just want to clarify that when you are outside and it is dark when a flashbulb goes off in front of your eyes it's incredibly difficult to keep them open.  Believe it or not, we took about 6 pictures prior to this one and this was the only one in which both of us actually had our eyes semi-open.  I wanted to keep trying to take pictures, but Paul's like Chandler from Friends - after a while he forgets how to smile (which you can sort of tell in this picture) - so he asked if we could stop.  Below are a few priceless "out-takes:"

                     

Apparently, we're not so photogenic. Paul said he was trying to get something out of his tooth in that one picture - guess he forgot what we were doing.