recap of chris' birthday

Above is Chris' 35th birthday portrait...I am quite pleased with how it turned out! I think my favorite tradition we have is taking a portrait of the birthday person on their birthday. To me, it is important to capture a person on their special day, as a documentation of how they are growing and changing.

Chris received quite a few nice gifts...some cool shirts (one Ralph Lauren, one Hollister, one Express)...some gift cards to iTunes, Starbucks, the movies, and his favorite mexican restaurant...some books...and one thing that he has really been wanting:

He's been so interested in making his own wine...so I found him a deluxe starter kit for him to get started. Should be an interesting hobby!!

To go with his kit, I bought him a wine making cookbook...should come in handy...

As a gag, I bought him the new "Eat Clean Diet for MEN" book by Tosca...I was going to buy the book anyway, because I want the 60 recipes in it...but I thought it would be funny to just give it to him as a joke too. However, he actually seems a little interested in reading through it, and has already gotten started. Okay! Works for me! :)

To wrap the big box that the wine kit came in, I used this adhesive wrapping paper. NOT a fan. That stuff was so difficult to work with!!! Won't use it again. However, Chris did find a fun use for the leftover wrapping:

In the evening, we decided to drive out to Tye (about 20 minutes away) for their fireworks show. They have theirs on the 3rd, and Abilene has theirs on the 4th. We parked on the side of the road with everyone else, and waited for it to get dark. The show was pretty good, and I attempted to take photos. Unfortunately, fireworks aren't the easiest thing to capture. Most of my 65 shots looked similar to this:

I was lucky and captured this semi-decent one...guess I should've taken the tripod.

It's a good thing I took pictures though, because we were quite sidetracked and preoccupied as soon as the show began. Right before it started, we discovered that the Murano was dead. No battery. Twenty minutes from home, no jumper cables, out in the middle of the country. Stranded. I asked the truck in front of us if they had cables...nope. Chris called a few people. Mimi had a student who was actually out at the show, and they offered to find us afterwards. Our friend Rolando's brother was at the show, but they didn't have cables. So, we decided to wait for Mimi's student to find us, and opened the hood and waited. Meanwhile, car after car after car proceeded to drive by us after the show ended. No one stopped. Until, finally, a kind man came out of the darkness and asked if we were standed. I said, yes, actually we were...did he have jumper cables? And blessedly, he did. He waved his friend over with their truck, and within seconds we were up and running! Thank god there is still some goodness in the world!

As soon as we got onto the road and into the long line trying to leave, Chris exclaimed, "There's a dog! It's going to get run over!" So we hopped out of the car and tried to keep it from going out in front of the cars. It was a very sweet dog, obviously a pet. No tags though. His fur was soft, but he had a few stickers in it. He was not afraid of us, let us pet him and even pick him up. There wasn't a lot we could do, but we waited for the cars to thin out before leaving him. I hope that his owners found him...

What an evening! But, overall, I think it was a very nice birthday for Chris...