Follow the Yellow Brick Road

This year was my and Nate's first time really celebrating our birthdays together. Nate was being very sneaky and would not give me any details about what he had in store for my birthday despite several poor attempts on my part to extract some bit of information from him.
The day started out with finding a card that he slipped into my purse before he left for work. I always love getting little notes from him and wish I could return the favor more but he doesn't have a purse (thankfully) and usually leaves before I do. Then I had a lovely bouquet of purple flowers delivered to my office. I mean what girl doesn't like getting flowers at the office?
When I arrived home this is what was awaiting me on our back patio.

Nate had picked up take out from my favorite Italian restaurant, Mardenely's (aka Rigatony's old Mesa location)and served me a candelight dinner of crusty bread, antipasto salad, and baked ziti. Yummy!

After dinner it was present time. After rifiling throught the tissue paper I pulled out of the gift bag our Garmin GPS unit, and a yellow brick with longitudinal coordinates attached. I had to go geocaching for my present.

So we hopped in the car and I led the way. Upon reaching the specified location I searched around and found...another yellow brick with coordinates attached. After a few more searches that led me to his dad's print shop and the old Matta's restaurant (the site of our very first date) each time finding another yellow brick, I was led back home to our back patio where Nate had hid a green (supposed to be emerald) envelope. Inside were two tickets to Wicked at Gammage in July.

Now I'm not a big Broadway musical fanatic but I did like the book and The Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie when I was growing up. I think I practically wore the VHS tape out, I owned red sparkly shoes, and I had a small battery operated dog I named Toto that I carried around in a basket.

I thought I did pretty good with his birthday but I think he just raised the bar.