Thursday, August 1, 2013

Getting Older and All It Entails.

It is my birthday today. I'm turning 24.

If I lived in China, today I'd be turning 25. In some Eastern territories, I'd be 25 years and 9 months old. The Chinese begin counting the age of a child at conception, declaring the child to be 1 year old at birth, and 2 years old on their following birthday. I think that they're just trying to give their children a head start on other countries.

I have had a wonderful, wonderful birthday today. I started celebrating at 12am by firing 24 rapid shots into the woods, which seemed like the proper thing to do. I went in and slept until 7am, when I was awoken by my cell phone. A friend was calling me to wish me a happy birthday and apologize for waking me. Perhaps there are those of you out there thinking, "How could you possibly still be asleep at 7am?!" Well, I'm certainly an evening person. If you were to stage a 5am Bible study and an 11pm Bible study, I'd far prefer 11pm. Nevertheless, the birthday wake-up call was a nice start to a really nice day.

My sisters Shannon and Shelley called to wish me a wonderful day, and it was good to chat with them and their children. Carita was bawling in the background as Shannon fed her children lunch and Jocelyn was running away with Shelley's phone while she was trying to talk to me, which made it even more special, because I realized that both of my sisters were exceedingly busy and had their hands full but took the time to call me anyway.


It was beautiful weather today, so we were working on the roof. Dad asked me to help him install a sweet solar light through the kitchen ceiling, which required crawling through piles of attic insulation. I had just poked my head through the hole to hear my mother ask my father if we all could eat lunch in Kalona, and he looked up and said, "What! It's your birthday today? Oh. Happy birthday, Shawn!"

 
The Solar Light companies do not advertise that you will have to crawl through deep, musty insulation in order to install their magical mirror tube.


So Dad, Mom, Shane, Sheryl, Shaylon and I ate together at the Kalona Family Restaurant and had a wonderful time.





After we returned from lunch, Dad was really easy on me and I didn't have to crawl through attics anymore.

I'm going to include a few extra photos of myself smiling, because my mother would have you believe that I hardly ever smile "normally" in photographs.



After work, I went out with some manfriends for supper. We normally have Bible study on Thursday evenings, but this evening we decided to socialize and eat large hamburgers at Short's Burgers & Shine in Iowa City.

Nevin, showing us that marriage doesn't always mean you have to surrender to polite table manners. 

Jordan, showing us the hypnotic power of these delicious hamburgery morsels. 

Shane canceled three prior obligations to spend time with us, and I was grateful.

Kendal just got back from a long trip to Florida, which evidently prevented him from having enough patience to fully assemble his hamburger prior to devouring it.

Nevin took one glance at my delicious bunless burger and decided it looked way tastier than his burger.

The company was hilarious. The food was tremendous. This was the first time I ate at that wonderful burger joint, but it will not be the last. We had a wonderful server so I left her a note.

I had been using a napkin to illustrate a story I was telling, which is a tactic I've inherited from the three generations of men before me. The boys told me to leave the napkin there, preferably with my number on it for the waitress. Instead, I wrote a thank-you note. 

Jordan and Nevin fought over paying for my meal. If fighting was always like that, I think I would be a lot less Non-Resistant. Jordan won, which was wonderful because I was afraid it would be a draw and default back to me. Thank you for supper, Jordan! Nevin, not to be outdone, paid for parking. Nevin also drove all of us to Iowa City, using his precious fuel and blasting through yellow lights with the new turbo he put in his Subaru.

As if mountains of delicious hamburgers and fries weren't enough, Nevin decided that we were all craving ice cream from Dairy Queen. Kendal bought me a delicious Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard, and it filled all the tiny cracks that the hamburger and fries didn't fill.

The sweet young woman at Dairy Queen consented to taking our photo through the order window.

After food and more food, we journeyed to Christian's to watch The Great Race, which is a hilarious classic that everyone should watch at least one time, preferably with good friends at a late hour.

Oh Hezekiah, you sneaky man.

I got home past midnight, which was fitting. 24 hours of birthday celebration with a little bit of sleep and work tossed in there.

Grandma and Grandpa gave me a bunch of fruit and a Page-a-Day calendar of Mind Benders and Brain Teasers. The calendar is for 2013, and since 2013 has gotten quite a head-start on me, I've got the considerable job of catching up. But Grandma thinks I'm smart and thought I needed the extra challenge. ;)

Frank and Ada, a sweet elderly couple from my church, gave me a set of Skip-Bo cards for my birthday because they remembered me saying I could use a deck of Skip-Bo cards when we were playing games at church last New Years Eve. It blew my socks off, because even though I had forgotten to get myself a deck, they hadn't forgotten. 

My brothers Shelby and Shane said wonderfully nice things about me on my Facebook. Shelley wrote a sweet blog about me. I received calls, texts, cards, and messages on my Facebook. Many people went out of their way to wish me a happy birthday, and I'm extremely grateful. I'm afraid they've all got me confused with some incredible-yet-charming identity thief, and I would love to meet the man they're talking about. :)

Overall, a lot of people had a lot of nice things to say to me, and I feel very blessed. Thank you, friends and family, for making this day so nice.

24, I'm stuck with you for a year. But so far you've been pretty swell. I guess I'll let you stick around.

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