A Birthday Get-Away

 Art and I have birthdays that are exactly two weeks apart. We've been getting a free birthday drink at Starbucks every year for quite a few years now. We had also built up a bank of star rewards that would equal to another couple of free drinks which were going to expire soon.

Since moving to Hawaii 14 years ago, Art and I have celebrated every birthday and holiday with mom (unless we were traveling) making sure whatever dishes we had would be something we knew she would love.

For Art's birthday we decided to go out and get his free birthday drink and use up some star rewards to get another free drink for me.

It was a guilty pleasure to go out on our own and spend some private time together.

We went to a parking lot and sat under some flowering shower trees.

The breeze was cool. We sipped on our mocha frappuccino and matcha frappuccino with almond milk and gazed at the flowers around us.

It was peaceful and we felt like two delinquent kids.

We couldn't stop smiling and laughing.

That night, we had a special take-out sushi dinner with mom that she loved.

We enjoyed the brief hour so much that two weeks later on my birthday, we did the same thing again.

I was sure that the shower tree season would be over.

But the flowering trees weren't quite finished. As we sat under the trees again with our frappuccinos, the petals started swirling all around us. There's a word for this in Japanese. Hanafubuki. Flower blizzard. 

So there we were sipping on our drinks in the middle of this flower blizzard.

We were so happy.

And mom? Oh yes, another sushi dinner had her smiling too.