First Lady Jill Biden celebrates 70th birthday with a 'quiet' beach day with President Biden

The first couple, President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, stole a quiet day away from their busy schedules this week to visit one of their favorite spots in honor of the first lady's 70th birthday. According to PEOPLE, the duo celebrated Dr. Biden's milestone birthday on Thursday at their vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The trip was a rare midweek getaway from the White House for the couple and their first visit to the beach house since President Biden took office in January. They are expected to return to Washington, D.C., on Friday.

The first lady was already at the house in Rehoboth Beach when the president arrived on Wednesday evening, reports Associated Press. Dr. Biden planned to spend a quiet birthday at home with the president, said Michael LaRosa, the first lady’s spokesperson. "Anyone who knows the first lady knows how much she enjoys her time at home in Rehoboth," he told CNN. The couple took advantage of the warm and sunny day — with breezy temperatures around 79 degrees — by taking a bike ride along the Gordons Pond Trail in the Cape Henlopen State Park in the early afternoon. The Bidens looked cheerful in their black biking outfits as they rode past onlookers, waving and grinning when a crowd of well-wishers sang "Happy Birthday" to the first lady.

The Bidens reportedly bought the cul-de-sac in Rehoboth Beach for $2.7 million in 2017 after signing an $8 million multi-book deal at the end of the Obama administration. The house is said to be just north of the beach resort and has a swimming pool that overlooks Cape Henlopen State Park. In a 2019 profile, Vogue described it as "a rambling, three-story Colonial painted the color of just-washed denim." Explaining the story behind the plaque hanging above the front door that reads: "A PROMISE KEPT," Dr. Biden said: "The promise kept was actually this house! Because he kept saying, 'When I write my book, I’ll buy you a beach house.'"

Dr. Biden revealed at the time that the residence was the first house the couple looked at when they started shopping for homes and that she instantly knew it was the vacation house she wanted. However, she said, they ended up looking at about two dozen more properties because the future president thought it was too expensive. "He loves to look at houses," the first lady said of her husband. "It's one of his things." President Biden is said to have finally come around when someone on his staff said, "For God's sake, just buy her the house she wants!"

"I wanted it to be the kind of place where you can come in in your wet bathing suit and bare feet and I can just take the broom and brush out the sand. And that's what this is. Everything's easy," the first lady told the magazine. The Bidens moved into the house less than two years after their son Beau, a former Delaware attorney general and Delaware Army National Guard member, died of brain cancer in May 2015. One sign on the house says "Beau's gift" while another sign reads "Forever Jill."

Dr. Biden, a longtime community college professor, recently finished her latest semester after virtually teaching an English course at Northern Virginia Community College. "Teaching is not what Jill does. Teaching is who she is," Biden said last week. "And she's done it her whole adult life, and she's still doing it." Dr. Biden had pledged to keep teaching if she became the first lady. "But I don't think she bargained for having to teach online initially," Biden joked, adding that the first lady spent a lot of time — "four hours a day for about a month" — learning how to teach virtually since most schooling was taken online with the onset of the pandemic.