Thirty Five-bulous

This last week I turned 35. I know some people dread birthdays, but I look forward to mine. I don’t know why it is I look forward to my birthday, but it probably has something to do with my love of surprises.

To tell this story I want to reflect on my last mile stone birthday, the year I turned 30. In 2012 Timothy was just two months old and I was on maternity leave. My birthday fell mid-week and all I wanted was Indian Food for dinner. TJ does not care of Indian Food, so we never seek it out and I had no idea where to go. After calling around to a few places I found on Google, only one restaurant answered and they did not do take-out. We were not about to take a 2 year old and 2 month old out in the snow to an Indian restaurant. Although, now with 3 we bravely go anywhere with our brood. I think it’s funny how the more kids you have the more adventurous you become.   I’m not sure what we decided on for dinner, but it wasn’t Indian. TJ did awesome and got me some amazing gifts. I used all of them. At some point over the years the wine glass broke which I’m sure was due to some over use. The picture frame sat on our kitchen counter with the lovely family it came with for three years. Yes, you read that correctly three years. I finally put a picture in it from Taylyn’s baptism. I was just waiting until the family was complete before I put a picture in the frame. There maybe some truth when TJ says I don’t do well decorating the house.

I was going through Facebook looking at pictures from my last couple birthdays. In 2014 I surprised TJ with tickets to see Gabriel Iglesias “Fluffy” and dinner at Fogo de Chao. As I told you I love surprises so I decided to make my own surprises to guarantee there would be one on my birthday. Our awesome neighbors Heather and James came with us. I was 4 months pregnant with Taylyn that evening. We showed up at the show after dinner and found out our tickets were for the night before. I was panicking. Heather and I walked briskly to the ticket booth and we charmed the ticket salesman explaining to him I was pregnant and it was my birthday. He kindly exchanged our tickets and he gave us awesome seats, much better than had we gone the day prior. So luck was on our side and I pulled off the surprise for myself!

For being in Afghanistan I had a really awesome birthday! Since my goal is to run 200 miles in December, while getting all my bike rides in and going to the pool twice a week, I decided to run 20 miles on my 35^th birthday. Running thirty-five miles is way too many so I just went with 20. I woke up and did 10 in the morning. I love snow, and there was a little snow on the ground on the morning of my birthday. It was nice to see something I love on my birthday especially because I couldn’t be with my loves.

For lunch I ran an additional 6 miles, so now I’m at 16. For this run I started to break in a new pair of running shoes. I good friend of mine, Jeff Klein (I wrote about him in For, You, For Me, For Each Other), sent me a new pair of shoes and it was time to start using them. Thank you so much for the thoughtful gift.  Trust me they will get used, probably over used!

To top off my birthday and to finish my 20 miles my feral friends assumed me with another virtual run. This time the run was for the opening of Star Wars.  It was called May the Run Be with You! We did a 4 mile run completely many circles in the cold! I wore pink light up dread locks. I bought them for our New Year’s Eve run, but I thought they were perfect for this run as well. Someone asked me while we were running if I got any presents and over the last couple weeks I’ve received many care packages with different gifts. My favorite was the owl tie blanket Timyra made for me. Even though I didn’t have any presents to open on my birthday, just having good friends to run with was present enough. Afterwards we stayed outside (as long as the cold allowed) and ate cupcake Oreos, black forest Tim Tams (they are an Australian cookie and if you’ve never had a Tim Tam you can get them at World Market and I highly recommend them), and amazing dark chocolate from Belgium.

 

 

My family celebrated without me. I mean everyone should take advantage of any excuse to eat cake. As you notice there are a lot of sprinkles on my cake, just the way I like it!

So I’ve decided to coin Thirty Five as Thirty Five-bulous! Thirty-five is going to be a fabulous year. Half way through the year I will finally be home. I am looking forward to the day I am home for good with my loves. I will be thirty five-bulous when I become an Ironman. I know there are many things to come in my year of thirty five-bulous that will make it even more fabulous.  What I know for sure is this year is going to fabulous, and I’m going to enjoy every minute. There is something about a year in Afghanistan that makes you appreciate EVERYTHING more!

This week I also want to give a shout out to TJ and his awesome daddy skills with his girls.  A few days ago Timyra decided to ask my dad, she must really trust her Grandpa, about bras.  Of course my dad sent her to Grandma who explained you’ll need to wear one when you get older.  I was instantly curious why she was even asking.  I thought this was a perfect opportunity to see if anything is going on at school and find out what the other kids are talking about.  Facebook messenger is not the ideal place to have this conversation.  So after Timyra’s swimming lesson on Thursday, TJ took her to Culvers to chat.  He is a dad of girls, but he didn’t have to do this.  Thank you for stepping in when I couldn’t be there!  Love and miss all of you!