Making the Best of a Quarantined Birthday

I had a whole plan envisioned for Ryan's birthday, which was this past Friday, but I had to scrap it, because it involved leaving the house. :)

But I have to say, I was super excited about my Plan B birthday idea, and I'll share it with you here in detail in case you need to plan anything for your immediate future!

Ryan did have to work on his birthday, so we didn't get the entire day together, but that was okay. I think he had fun with his current work team.

Ryan went to the store the night before his birthday, and I had crossed my fingers that he would be able to find the frozen bread dough I needed to make sticky rolls for his birthday. Bread/flour/yeast have been hot commodities around here, so I wasn't confident, but I hoped. AND HE FOUND IT! So Thursday night I put together sticky rolls and the morning of his birthday, I got up and baked them so he could take them to work to share with his buddies! My only sadness was in not being able to go to the hospital to celebrate with him there!

Even though they're new as co-workers, they had a mini party for him, and his picture-loving team member kept me well supplied with photos of their celebration. (He scored a free lunch, too, from a donation to the hospital. BBQ from one of our favorite local places.)

Normally we go out to eat for our birthdays, and while I thought a picnic sounded fun, I wasn't sure I could count on fickle Indiana weather to cooperate, so I didn't even begin to try.

Ryan loves Giordano's pizza, and because we don't have one around here, we don't get to have it on the regular. In fact, I think the last time we had it was two years ago on his birthday when we drove to downtown Indianapolis to eat at the location there. Deep dish pizza isn't really a car-friendly fare, so even though I knew I could order Giordano's and we could drive down for carry-out, it didn't seem like the best plan. BUT!!!! They ship. Yep. They ship it frozen. 

My sister helped me with this so Ryan wouldn't see the order on our statement. You have to order a minimum of two pizzas for shipping - and I won't lie to you about the cost. It's not a frugal pizza. But it is a DELICIOUS pizza, and it was his birthday, and we did get two, so I declared it worth the splurge. I ordered early to make sure it arrived in time and then hid them in the freezer under  towel with a note that said DO NOT PEEK!!!

Since the day of his birthday ended up being pretty, I thought it would be fun to enjoy porch dining. So while he was at work, I set up a table on the sun porch and transformed the space (as much as I could) into a birthday pizza parlor. I made little menus and everything. It was so fun.

I made this little person of the year cover (slightly doctored up, since it was for a 40th birthday) here and printed and framed it. (That was a free download.) I also found this sign and this one on Etsy. Both were really inexpensive and download to print, so I was able to get them printed and framed (shopped frames in the house) right away. From there I used balloons and a handful of other random decor I found in our party supply tub in the closet. It wasn't extravagant, but it provided a good touch.

I didn't have anything else to serve other than the pizza, because it is RIDICULOUSLY filling and calorie-laden, and I also had dessert plans. I did ask him if he could stop on the way home from work to pick up fountain Cokes, because a proper deep dish pizza celebration needs Cokes on the side.

And because he loves pie more than cake, I baked a razzleberry pie (his favorite) for dessert to have along with ice cream and coffee. You can put candles in a pie just as easily as you can a cake!

 When he arrived home and saw the theme of the celebration, he was so excited! We took tons of pictures - most of these were his own request. Enjoy!

 He was fascinated with the shipping process of the pizza. I hadn't been able to throw away the box it came in, since it was labeled as a Giordano's box, and I knew he'd see it in the trash/recycle bin. So I had to hide it under the desk in our office with a bath towel over it until he knew about the pizza. Apparently it was photo worthy!

 While we waited for the pizza to bake, he opened the cards that had been coming in the mail for a few days. We'd stacked them all up to open on his birthday. The first one here is from me. I wasn't able to go to the store to buy one, so I found a download on the Dating Divas website that allowed me to purchase 10 downloadable cards (for less than I probably would have paid for one card at the store). So that's what he got from me!

Then it was time to eat!!

Then it was time for presents! I gifted him an online escape room adventure and a movie. More on these in a moment...

I hadn't realized that his birthday fell on NFL draft night (silly me!) so before we did anything else, he wanted to watch a bit of that. Perfectly fine with me!

My parents thought he should have a proper quarantine birthday parade, which was something I had not put together, but they gave him a one car parade anyway!

That was pretty fun!

THEN we got to the escape room. I got this idea originally because one of the pastors on our staff had linked this to his wife's Facebook page and told her it sounded like a fun date night. It's a DIY at-home date night, perfect for quarantine life. But before I could purchase it, my sister told me about this at-home, online escape room that was created by a library - and it was free! I decided to go that route instead, because free is Ryan's favorite word. LOL!!

The room was really fun to do - but it was relatively short. That was fine for us, because we already had other fun things in our night. But if it had been the ONLY thing in our date, it might have been too short.

We did escape, though! Yay, us!

The movie part of the night was supposed to be renting I Still Believe from the theater. (I had checked and AMC still had it playing.) We both wanted to see it and hadn't yet. But we were not sure we could stay awake (hello, pizza coma) and we didn't want to pay for a movie and then sleep through it, so we have yet to do that part.

Ryan said it was a really fun night! He asked if I could tell him what Plan A had been, and I told him no...but after we finally do that date someday, I'll tell him it was Plan A. LOL!! But I think he found Plan B to be the perfect celebration.