Day 1

Yesterday Kyle left for his work trip in Mexico.  Although he didn't get a picture of it, he rode to the airport in style: stretch limo.  Kinda crazy, right?  His flights were pretty uneventful from what I heard (except for the second plane being too small, hehe) and he spent his evening at dinner with the crew.  Don't worry, my day was much more eventful than his!

The boring part: I went to class, tutored a fourth grader, went to class again, picked up a package at UPS, came home and studied, took a 30 minute 1.5 hour nap (oops), studied again, and then my family (minus Amber) came over to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday!  This was the second birthday "party" he'd ever had - the first one being when him and my mom were in college and she threw him a party (guests: her roommate and his roommate).  We didn't increase the party guests...still a 4 person party...but at least this time my dad wasn't "sick as a dog" (apparently he was really sick...but my mom still threw the party in the building's common room downstairs).  We ate Persian food while chatting it up and had a grand ol' time talking about opiate addicts, gross hospital stories, and seeing what animals we could find in our food (dad's spoonful of ice cream looked like a camel head).  Really class stuff, but in our defense: my mom is a nurse and I worked in the Emergency Department last spring.  My dad always finds animals in his food.  And Emily's social work internship has recently had meetings discussing opiate addicts in our hometown. Good times.

After dinner, my dad said "ok, time to go so you can study!"  But I made everyone gather around the TV and I prayed that my brain could help me figure out how to work it since we have 3 remotes and Kyle is always the one that gets everything set up.  Let me tell you: I am awesome.  Not only did I get the DVD queued correctly, I also had the volume at the perfect level and didn't press a single unnecessary button!  For my dad's 60th birthday, my sisters and I taped ourselves saying funny things our dad says [that we love].  I was a little nervous that he would find it more offensive than funny, so I held my breath as the first clip came on...and he laughed before any of us did!  He laughed for ALL FIFTEEN of the clips, and I felt so proud that we were able to bring him joy and laughter on his birthday.  My dad doesn't really like doing the whole birthday thing, so this was a huge win in my book!  He thought it was very creative and original, and I sent him home with the DVD titled "Happy 60th Birthday Daddy  <3 Your Daughters."

After they left, Kyle and I got to Skype...which didn't work too well...so then we used Viber to talk on the phone for free.  It was just like last year when we were still doing long distance...really bizarre!  Today (February 14) actually marks the 1 year anniversary of his first day at work, which also means our first day of officially being not-long-distance anymore.  Hooray!