Birthdays are awesome. But they have one inherent flaw: they only last one day. It ends up being a bittersweet experience because after a day of glorious self-centric celebration and indulgence, the next day is spent wallowing in the disappointment of having to pay attention to other people again.

Michelle and I discovered some time ago that things go much better when you spread the celebrating out over longer periods. Enter Birthweek and Birthmonth. The concept is simple enough: once you enter the month of your birth, you can officially begin celebrations under the umbrella of Birthmonth. Then, celebrations intensify during Birthweek. Birthweek is the week during the month that contains your actual Birthday. There is some leeway here, as the person of honor is allowed to choose the official start and end of Birthweek - the only stipulation being that Birthweek can only last seven days and has to contain the actual birthday. Of course, the festivities are most intense on your Birthday.

My birthday is in September, so I have the glorious honor of currently being in Birthmonth. Festivities started this past weekend. It’s the last weekend Michelle’s parents will be in town, so we celebrated my birthday early. Technically, we celebrated both Michelle’s and my birthdays because her parents won’t be in town for Michelle’s birthday, either. I’m going to ignore that. It is my Birthmonth, ergo, I get to ignore things like that.

We spent an awesome day Saturday in the city. We started with breakfast at Cafe Besalu in Ballard before heading over to South Lake Union to take an air tour of the Seattle area by waterplane. The weather was perfect and the trip was spectacular. After the plane ride, we headed up to Shilshore Marina and walked along the shore at Golden Garden Park. Finally, we headed over to Ray’s Boat House for dinner. We took advice from regulars and sat at the Boat House Cafe and ordered from the restaurant. The Cafe has outdoor seating on the rooftop patio, but the restaurant has a superior menu, so it’s the perfect situation. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more glorious view than the one from our table. We were lucky enough to catch the sunset while we ate in almost perfectly clear weather.

We love this city.

Enjoy the photo album, but if you’re not interested in flipping though 95 photos, make sure you skip to the end and see the photos of the sunset; there really is no sunset like a sunset on the West Coast.