Big Birthday

I've been blogging so infrequently that it seems I've forgotten some folks entirely! On January 4 we celebrated two big milestones - Dan's 35th birthday and the halfway mark for the passenger's journey. Dan switched back to daytime shifts in the new year, but he managed to be the guy on call New Year's Day, so we still managed to miss some festivities there. I'm proud to say I was asleep for the actual moment 2013 arrived because I had been running sleep deprived for a few weeks and decided to halt that trend.

I remembered all too late that this was a big milestone birthday for Dr. Dan. Back when we were dating, he had claimed he had no plan to live past 35. His cholesterol was frightening, there were a series of bad health things in his family, he was generally pessimistic about his longevity. I told him I planned to keep him around significantly longer than that. When we got married, I made efforts to explore low-cholesterol foods, introduce him to vegetables (though often disguised in meat), etc. Medical school and residency definitely make my job tougher, but he's making some efforts on his own these days as well.

I feel like his birthday should have resembled an over the hill party with all kinds of dark humor, but didn't manage to pull anything together. Instead, I slow cooked a pork roast so it was ready when he got home from work. I got the kids in their jammies and we headed to Mom's and slept over at her house. Late the next morning, we didn't feel motivated enough to go look at minivans, so we left the kids for naptime with Nanna and went to watch the Hobbit. It was the first movie I've seen in a ludicrously long time. Almost worth the NYC prices! Perhaps the anti-climactic feel of the day is the most appropriate way to celebrate after all.

Penny was really excited about making his birthday special, though. She grabbed the Lego catalog and chose some items she thought he'd like best. She definitely wanted to give him "Something with little pieces that he can play when Paul is asleep." She wrapped up the Legos with care and hid them in the living room for the big day. She was all over making him a nice chocolate cake. There was some debate about whether it should have pink icing, but I eventually convinced her that chocolate mousse icing would be lovely as well. There were some lovely chocolate faces as I was spreading the "icing" on the cake.