This year I turned 29. Next year will be the start of a whole new decade for me, so I'm going to enjoy this, the last year of my third decade!
To celebrate, we had some family over. Grandma came and read stories.
David and Linnea brought their baby to cuddle and their icecream maker - which was a blast!
Yummy cake made by Aaron and homemade icecream!
We belated realized we had no birthday candles in the house, so we just pantomimed. The kids were unimpressed.
This is the only one I got a picture of (hard to dictate that when I'm not behind the camera!) but I've been wanting it for some time. I know we can't use it for several months, but I love the yard game Bocce Ball! My other great gifts included the Hunger Games series, a family yearbook in blog-to-book form, a water barrel for our food storage (promise, I was THRILLED to get this!), a dustbuster (another requested, truly happy to have received gift), and a pie iron, to add to our growing camping gear. I had so much fun and look forward to making use of all these wonderful gifts - some of which are already well worked-in. Thanks to all for the great birthday!
I don't have a photo, but I do have a marvelous memory for this day. One thing I've been feeling is super-homesickness. For my own family. I organized a skype get-together with all my sibs and my parents and it was the very best thing I could have! We all got to chat together and some of us got to see others for brief moments. (None of us has the paid-for version of skpye.) I had hoped to sing Christmas carols, but we quickly learned that the audio lag was too much. Instead, and I'm SO glad we did this, we each got our copy of the Christmas stories we'd grown up listening to. Each of us took a turn and read beloved family tales like "The Year of the Flexible Flyers", "A Tiny Fragment of Steel", "The Late-Night Visitor", the one I can't recall the name to about Christmas in Vietnam, and a few others. It was terribly wonderful to hear each of my siblings and parents choose favorites and read aloud, to hear sniffles and catching voices. I love my family and it really warmed my heart and filled me up emotionally to feel all together, even though in reality we're spread across the continent. It also pleased me to hear my mom say that this was the best Christmas gift; even though I selfishly called it for me, she benefited from hearing all of us together, too. It really made for an excellent birthday!
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