28 Birthdays and Counting...

I thought it would be fun to try to remember (or find pictures or journal entries of) every birthday I've had.  Turns out, it's a lot harder than I thought.  This was a good exercise for me, especially, because I already have like the world's WORST long-term memory, and I'm finding it's only getting worse as I get older.  But, except for a gap in my childhood years, I didn't do too badly.  I've still got a few places to look for more pictures, so maybe I'll update this post in a while.  For now, come stroll down memory lane with me and see me through the years!

Technically, I guess, I've had 29 birthdays...this is my very first one.  (Well, a day after, anyway.)

28 BIRTHDAYS:

1.  Yummy chocolate cake, and a little sister on the way!

2.  I don't remember 2-7, but I DID find a couple of pictures...

My second birthday, with my Grandpa Hall helping me blow out the candles (I was born on my grandparents' anniversary, so it was a special day for both of us!).

3rd, 4th...can't find anything. :(

5:

6th, 7th...can't find anything, except this picture which I *think* is sometime around my 7th birthday...but I'm not totally sure because there is no cake.

8. This is the first birthday I vividly remember, because not only was I supposed to get baptized BUT we only had "real" parties (the kind that cost money and you send out invitations) on our 8th, 12th, and 16th birthdays--otherwise, it was just a family or a few friends in a small affair.  Which I liked.  BUT.  This is also the year we had a crazy ice storm (over my birthday) and had to postpone everything--baptism for more than 2 months, and the party until the next year.  I spent my 8th birthday at my grandpa's house, because after a few days without electricity, Mom and Dad realized that entertaining and taking care of 4 kids without modern conveniences was just too hard.  :)

9.  My first actual party!  I had some friends over, and I don't remember much else except we had my favorite meal (taco salad, which is STILL one of my favorite meals) and played some games (like pictionary, balloon volleyball, and a hula-hoop contest).

10. I had a small sleepover with two friends, and I started my teddy bear collection in earnest.

11. I don't remember this one much, but I know I got a pretty green wrap-around skirt that I wore FOREVER.

12. My basketball birthday!  We had my party at the church, so we could play basketball.  We ate some actual food, I'm sure, but I mostly remember this awesome cake my mom made.  :)

13. I think I had a sleepover again this year, but it's a little hazy.

14. ???  All my journal says from this year is that I got older and was nervous about moving up to Mia Maids because all the Beehives got along really well, but I only had two friends in the Mia Maids.  Hahaha.

15. To make up for ruining my birthday with the news of their divorce 3 days earlier, my parents took me to Beef and Boards in Indy to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  I loved it.  It was the last happy memory I have with both my parents together.

16. This birthday was pretty awesome, although I didn't feel like it at the time.  I missed my real friends and family while I was in Florida with our high school band.  I KNOW we went to the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, AND Medieval Times.  (This was sandwiched between two days at DisneyWorld and a day at Universal Studios, marching in the Mardi Gras parade, and other fun things I don't remember.)

17. Dad and Carri got married a few months before this birthday.  One of my little sisters and both my stepsisters also had March birthdays (we're actually about a week apart exactly, except for mine which is a day off the rest), so we had a joint family party this year for all 4 of us.  I don't really remember anything else because I was too depressed to care.

18. I know I had a birthday...but I have no idea what I did, other than go to church as the wards split from two to three.  Maybe THIS was the year we had the joint party for all 4 of us?  Hmm...no pictures, so no idea.
(EDIT: I found a journal entry about this!
"To celebrate turning 18, I did all those things that people aren't allowed to do until they are legal adults in this state: I got various body piercings and tattoos without parental permission, rented a rated "R" movie, joined the army, bought a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket, and eloped...psych!  [Yes, I still used "psych!" and "yo" and words like that].  The only thing I can do now that I WANT to do is vote, and the next election year for the Presidency isn't until 2004...what I did instead, after the Saturday night dinner with everyone [so, yes, THIS was the year with the joint party, which means the above picture was a party just for me], was got to Church on Sunday to hear about the wards splitting...I was really bummed...it was like the divorce all over again--until the meeting that day.  We sang "Onward Christian Soldiers," and the third verse made me smile--"WE ARE NOT DIVIDED, ALL ONE BODY WE."...After singing that, I was at peace with the whole thing.  Actually, I did a total 180...We also had a BYD that night, where we reviewed and discussed President Hinckley's 6 B's...At home, Mom threw a wonderful party, complete with spaghetti and garlic bread and salad, and a TCBY chocolate ice cream cake, and money as a gift...I took Charissa and Cerene to the mall for Applebee's on Friday with it, and we had a blast."

19. My roommate and friends threw me a genuine surprise birthday party, complete with pizza and 40 helium balloons and singing and fun times with like half the ward.  I was so touched, because I had no idea that was coming.

20. We had a small party at our apartment, but the memorable thing about this year was that my long-lost older brother (literally) and his then-fiancee (now wife) stopped by!  I was so nervous because I had no idea what to say to him, but it worked out nicely enough.  And there were kazoos.  And I got serenaded by some friends, who sang "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You."

21.  I had dinner at P.F. Changs with my roommate.  Crazy, wonderful friend Mike Ong played chauffeur.  We came back and had cake and ice cream with some old friends and all our roommates.  This was the last birthday at BYU with the Ya-Yas (my 5 roommates/sisterhood/best friends of all my BYU days) , because all of them up and married off or graduated on me within the next year and a half.  :)

22. This was a GREAT birthday.  I had had such a difficult few months (this was just after my hip injury in November AND the first year without the Ya-Yas), and I had been feeling a whole range of emotions, from sad and left-out and discouraged to blessed and eager to serve a mission and a little healthier (my birthday week was my first week without a cane!).  My roommate made a tutu (get it? 2-2) that I wore all day long, and another roommate got me some sheet music.  I went out to Dairy Queen with a friend, and another friend bought me TWO NEW TIRES for my car.  I also got serenaded again ("When You Say Nothing at All"), and a bunch of friends (including a few Ya-Yas) and I took pizza to the Provo library and watched Mary Poppins (a favorite!) and sang along with all the songs.  I felt so humbled and so loved.

23. I don't think anything good or memorable happened this year.  BUT I had really cute hair.  I've sort of gravitated back to this, but more golden hair instead of auburn...and swoopier bangs.

24. I had a party at my new apartment with my new roommates, not long after my Purdue-acceptance-letter party!  We just had friends over for cake and karaoke, and went to play on the playground at the nearby park.  Paul was there but I barely knew him then.  He said I looked sad, or distracted, or something--which was true, because, as I mentioned earlier, this was the day my brother tried to kill himself in prison.  I remember trying really hard to be happy and enjoy my day and feeling like I just didn't have it in me.  But my sisters were there to party, too, so that helped.  I couldn't find the pictures of this, but luckily Paul had made a slideshow with them in it so I could take some screenshots...sorry they're so blurry.

25. 25 was a very low-key year.  Paul and I had only been dating a few months and I was in my second semester at Purdue.  Paul, my best friend, and my sister got together and had a small party.  I was expecting more, so I look sadder than I am now when I think back on it. :)  I'm kinda into low-key right now.  BUT I do remember that Charissa got me a sticker maker, which is something I'd been asking for since I was like 9.  So that was awesome.  But I thought that having a boyfriend meant my birthday would rock, and it was only so-so.  ;)  Hahaha, still love you, Paul!  (Side note: not only is Paul's family not really into birthdays much, but it's a Filipino thing.  In fact, in the Philippines, when it's your birthday, YOU give the presents and treats.  So I still had to train him.)  I KNOW I have pictures of this somewhere, so I'll keep looking.  :)

26. 26 was a special birthday. Paul and I were engaged, and we went with my parents down to Nauvoo so I could receive my endowments.  I was very, very SICK.  We had gone to Chicago a day or two prior, and I had a terrible fever, dizziness, fatigue, swollen/sore throat, you name it.  I pretty much just passed out for two days there, then managed to make it down to Nauvoo, just healthy enough to go through the temple.  Barely.  :)  But it was a great day, and as soon as I got out of the temple, I just wanted to go back in and do it all again.  It was a beautiful day.  I wish I had pictures.  Dad and Carri took the pics with their camera so I have yet to see them at all.

27. During my 27th birthday, I was student teaching, and Paul came into the classroom to sugar-up my kids and tell them jokes and stories and speak in Spanish with my 1/3 ELL classroom.  (The video is them singing to me...in my class, the birthday kid gets to say HOW they want it sung, and since we were doing a machines theme and had studied robots, I told them I wanted to hear it robot-style.  :)  It was pretty cool.  We also went down to Indy to eat at the Melting Pot, and we traveled up to Chicago later to dress up and see the play Beauty and the Beast.  I also had a girls' night (sort of...little brothers were welcome) where we played spies and went to play laser tag and then came back to eat pizza.  (This was NOT all in the same day, by the way...we're not THAT crazy. :)

At Beauty and the Beast :)

In the classroom. :)

28. And now we're to me now!  Children's Museum, Fogo de Chau, and tonight some cake and ice cream with a few friends to wind down and wrap up birthday week.  Yay, 28!

28 and feelin' great!

Well, so-so.  Which is great to me.  :)

My 28th birthday was pretty awesome.  Paul really took to heart when I said I just wanted to spend some time with him, sans Netflix or iTouch or any other distractions, and do something really fun and memorable together.  The theme for all the gifts and activities was "a trip down memory lane."  Here are the actual gifts:

A juicer, "for all the meals" I make him.  :)

A picture of Beauty and the Beast--not only "my" Disney princess, but also to remember last year's trip to Chicago to see the play!

A sketch of me!  I've been wanting this for FOREVER.  He did a simple, small sketch of the two of us for Valentine's Day one year, but he didn't even draw me with glasses on.  And it was tiny and in a book.  This is framed and going on the wall.  :)  I'm in love with it.

For the activities:

We visited the site of the Indy temple.  It's just a field right now, but it's still cool to go and see the area and imagine what it will look like.  :)  This is also special because I got my endowments out on my birthday two years ago in Nauvoo, and Paul was right there with me.

We went to the children's museum!  I was going to take him for HIS birthday, but the funding just didn't work out.  We also love playing like kids together.  :)  I have SOOOOOOOO many pictures I don't even know where to begin.  I could do a post on each exhibit.  Seriously, I might.  And we both had a BLAST.  But here are a few of the highlights for us (you can find ALL the pictures HERE):

DINOSPHERE!

A real fossilized baby dino in an egg.

Looking up at the glass. :)

The ocean of glass at the base of the glass tower!

SO MANY STAR TREK COSTUMES!

He was so excited, you'd have thought it was HIS birthday!

He even got ME to try one on...but it was a kid's shirt so it didn't quite fit right.  :)

The walk-in kaleidoscope was a favorite of both of ours!

Paul got to be a race car driver.  :)

We "flew" to Egypt.

And made our own cuff bracelets.  :)

I have loved this water clock since I was little and visited the first time.  I seriously want one in my house.

Paul got to "interview" Ryan White as part of the "Power of Children" display.  :)

We were going to visit Caida in the hospital between all this fun and our dinner reservation, but she was released just an hour or so before we could have been there.  Instead, we went downtown and checked out the Borders closing sale.  Paul bought a Star Trek book and I got a mockingjay pin.  :)

We finally, in the tradition of going out on my birthday to eat at fancy restaurants where we can't afford to eat the rest of the year, had dinner at Fogo de Chau.  It's a Brazilian steakhouse in Indy, and it's awesome because not only is there an awesome salad bar and amazing sides, but there are people walking around with endless swords of meat.  You get to eat all you want--we had a little lamb, steak, chicken, steak, pork, and more steak.  (Gotta get your money's worth!)  They also threw in a free birthday cheesecake slice.  I had SUCH a nice time there, and I loved the energy of the place.  I also got SUPER full. :)

That was it!  Such a fun day.  And cake and ice cream tomorrow after church with a few friends to wrap up birthday week.  Thank you, Paul, for putting it all together and making it such a happy memory!

The bad with the good...

I had a GREAT birthday, and I will share pictures in another post later today.  But, like many of my birthdays, it will also be memorable because of a difficult thing that happened.

Not all difficult things are bad, of course, and sometimes they're even downright good, but just hard enough that they feel bad in the moment.  That's how it was on my 18th birthday when our wards split.  I grew up in that ward, and I was already terrified of changes that were soon coming (which also turned out to be wonderful), and the idea that my friends and family would be in different wards was just difficult news to swallow.  Of course, now I see how WONDERFUL it is, but at the time it was like the worst birthday ever.

My fifteenth birthday was pretty awesome, except for the fact that three days earlier my parents announced to us that they were going to divorce.

My 21st birthday, we lost President Bateman at BYU.  He didn't die, he just got replaced.  I loved that guy.  Another not-so-bad-but-still-painful memory.

My 24th birthday, my little brother tried to kill himself in prison.

So, every 3 years, something at least semi-bad (or hard or whatever) has happened.  I thought I broke the streak last year when, on my 27th birthday, I had a fabulous day with nothing to bring it down.

I guess it just forgot that year, so it decided to make up for it.

The good news is, Caida has a real diagnosis from doctors who finally know what's going on in her head.  The bad news is, the diagnosis is CORTICAL DYSPLASIA.  Basically, the dummied-down version of everything I've read, is that when her brain was forming, for some reason it didn't form quite right, and neurons clumped together are misfiring as a result.  This is causing her seizures.  And it usually causes developmental delays (which could be why she still talks like a 4-year-old or why she's so easily distracted). There is no cure.  Anticonvulsant medications are the first road you try, but 70% of kids who have CD are resistant to this.  The only other alternative so far has been brain surgery, in which they remove the affected area of the brain (some kids have an entire hemisphere affected, deep down, but others only have a little spot above some part of the brain that is easy to get to and won't affect them too much...I don't know how much her brain is affected yet).  What a scary thing!  And SOOOOO disheartening for my poor little Caida Waida Potata Head.  That means that she will probably never be able to drive a car.  She will likely continue to have seizures forever (even IF she had surgery, most people still experience them once in a while), and over time the seizures themselves will cause brain damage.  She will get slower and slower in some area of development or another.  It's just not going to be an easy life.

But she's a little girl with a STRONG heart.  And a powerful will.  Brains are such a NEW thing in medicine, really--we're only beginning to understand any of it, and people rewire themselves all the time to compensate. Besides, there is a WIDE range of abilities in children with CD, and I think Caida is really on the higher end of everything.  So I believe that, given enough support and love, she will still have a wonderful life.  Hard, yes.  But wonderful.  And I am personally SOOOOOOOOOO proud to call her my niece.  Without children of our own, our niece and nephew are the kids we love most in the whole wide world, and you don't have to qualify for that love by being perfect in any way.  It's just a given.  :)  So I'm not too worried. 

I am also SOOOOOO grateful for the knowledge I have of the Atonement of Christ and the Resurrection.  I believe in miracles in this life, and I am hoping and praying for one for Caida.  But even if the answer is "no," I still know in my heart that her suffering is only a temporary thing, and that someday we will ALL receive bodies free of pain and imperfections.  What a glorious thing to give me hope and comfort on days like today!

Please send your good thoughts, well-wishes, prayers, or anything POSITIVE our way!  Especially Cerene's, if you know her.  She could use the support and love even more than Caida, I think--mothers always tend to blame themselves even when they don't need to.

For a Successful St. Patty's Day Dinner:

...you need a little ambiance...

...and the proper attire...

...and some gross-looking but really delicious food...

That darn leprechaun!  Got into the homemade honey-butter and turned it GREEN!

...with plenty of leftovers...

...and, of course, you must enjoy your dessert of chocolate gold like you were a child again.

What did I do BEFORE dinner?  ALL DAY LONG?  I worked on this:

I'm about halfway done.  Maybe I'll get "lucky" and get a job next year!

And more celebrating today, because it's my BIRTHDAY!  Pictures to come!