Happy Birthday.
This is my husband, Neil. It’s his birthday today.
He’s a great husband. We’ve been married 14 years. Which means I was 12 when we got married. :)
I used to wonder what he might have been like as a kid. But now we have a good chunk of his personality walking around our house in the form of our daughter, and apparently a nearly exact image of him walking around in the form of our son. So at least that’s covered.
See? There it is.
Yep. All of it.
Happy birthday, Neil. Thank you for being a great husband & a great dad. Your infinite optimism has pulled me out of the dark side more times than I can count. Your creativity never runs out. Your ability to take on any problem and work it out patiently is amazing. Thank you for shaping our family.
I love you!
A giant interactive mystery game based on the Mission: Impossible movie. Held during a senior high lock-in. Students were in teams of 4, were given basic instructions about their ‘mission’ and the ‘agents’ they would encounter, and then were sent into a giant interactive set of experiences including complicated codes to break, clues to find, riddles to solve, physical feats to accomplish, all while journeying through various ‘sets’… MI soundtrack, dark, foggy… surprises around every corner. Highlight: students rappelling off the balcony to dangle in mid-air while punching a code into a computer. And a frightening simulation of being chased by the-helicopter-in-the-tunnel, involving a tight hallway, an earth ball, strobe light, and sound fx. It was pee-your-pants scary, according to some students. At the end, each group had the chance to present what they thought were the ‘answers’ to questions based on clues & codes. Only 2 groups out of about 20 completed everything correctly. Amazing night. And probably the only time I was so tired after a youth event that I was actually crawling on the floor during clean-up at 7am. 
The ‘Senior Hideout’ is an annual summer event where all the graduated seniors are invited to go on a trip (to an undisclosed location) with a few leaders… purpose: have fun AND talk about issues of faith and life after high school. A few years ago, the group stopped at Taco Bell in a small town for lunch on their way home. Neil took the opportunity to do something he’s always wanted to do: order one of everything on the menu. Everything. And 20 medium drinks. The Taco Bell worker at the counter was a bit stunned, but then caught the ‘vision’. They ended up with every variation of everything on the menu (supreme, Baja, etc) Cost: just over $200. Fairly certain they made the manager’s day.
