Birthday Week!

This week I completed my 28th year on this planet.

We gathered as a family a couple times this week in celebration, and I saw some strength finally return to my bad knee. I'm slowly transitioning from crutches to my walking cane, able to put more weight down on my leg, and I can even bend my knee more than last week. I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the beginning of my 12 day holiday, so I thought it would be nice to go out and travel to make the most of the time off. My leg was starting to improve and I was able to drive short distances, so Rhea and I planned on surprising my parents and sister in Arkansas and joining them all there as they welcomed my sister and brother in law into their new home. I knew that Camille also had some big announcements regarding a new job and joining the military, and my parents only had a short time before my dad goes back on his ship. 

Rhea and I got our business in order, ran the errands we needed to do before leaving our house for a period of time. Most importantly planned our bags to travel for the week, and picked up my go to road trip snacks: funyuns and sour patch watermelons. 

The night before we decided to leave for Arkansas, my leg was flaring out bad. I couldn't walk without crutches and I certainly could not drive for even 10 minutes. Rhea still isn't comfortable driving on the freeway, so we had to rain check our out of town escapade. 

When I'd lay down at night I'd feel so much pain, and would not be able to sleep. So I sat up and watched an episode of Love It or List It, Flip or Flop, The Great Food Truck Race, Master Chef, and America's Next Top Model every night after Rhea and Josiah went to bed and before I would finally be sleepy enough to fall asleep through the pain. I would be going to sleep 4am or 4:30am every morning and be groggy all throughout the day.

My leg slowly began to heal and I was able to transition from crutches to only the cane, and slowly off the cane to a mild limp/hobble. Once I was completely off the cane, I was happy to be able to run errands again, even if I had to take it slow. 

Now that spring has begun, we took out and set up our flower beds, we picked up 6 large bags of soil, went shopping at the fish market and to the grocery store. I used the shopping carts as like a walker that held some of my weight. 

On my birthday we picked up bobas from a Vietnamese place and went to wait at the Thai restaurant where we were meeting my brother, mom, and nanay. We had a good time. Josiah hadn't had a nap, so Kuya took him out for a long walk as I ordered the daily special that even on the lowest spice was definitely too spicy for me. Kuya was kind to switch his more mild noodle order with my hot curry.

The rest of the lunch went smooth and nice until mom insisted the waiter bring her a boba like the bobas that Rhea and I ordered from the Vietnamese place a couple miles down the street. The lady kindly replied they didn't have boba, and mom insisted that she wanted whatever I was having. I quietly told her again that I got it from a different place. Mom again insisted that even if they are out of boba, she wanted a smoothie like the one I ordered. 

It was finally settled. I ended up giving her the rest of my smoothie. When we had first sat down and before the waiter first came I told everyone our bobas were from a different place. I didn't want to draw the restaurant's attention to them, because I try not to take outside food into a restaurant from another. Just courtesy, but I was feeling like drinking a boba smoothie during my birthday lunch. Fun times. 

My vehicle registration had to be renewed the day after my birthday. For a long time I'd been planning to put an inside police joke on my tag, since it's mostly officers that look at tags anyway, and I thought my coworkers would get a kick out of seeing a tag that meant something only they and officers would understand. So I went in deciding that I would get either T26 MDC which means I got your message/did you get my message? or CLR T84 which means You're cleared to go on meal break/Am I cleared to go on meal break? Whichever one was not taken. We'll see how it all turns out.

My family had a second, more intimate birthday gathering at my house during the weekend. Kuya made pork ribs and a salad and a cole slaw, mom brought spicy fried chicken and we had cake and ice creams. It was a good time. Josiah also loved having company over and eating some of the chocolate desserts. 

At church I signed up to have the missionaries over for dinner on the 31st. Then soon after I signed up for that, the priesthood presidency planned to have a pizza and ice cream social on the same night at the same time, so I talked to the missionaries to reschedule our dinner for Friday the 30th rather than the 31st.