Happy Birthday to Me

I've never expected too much out of my birthday.  While growing up, my birthday and my brother's were always combined and celebrated somewhere in between the two weeks that separates our days (or were celebrated on his December 28th birthday date since it conveniently fell over winter break and was just easier to schedule), which means that my actual birthday was never really much of anything special.  The only real exception to this was in college with my group of friends and our habit of baking cookies or cakes for each other and getting together to celebrate each year.  This general lack of expectations however means that being apart from my husband for birthday number twenty-eight is not something that has bothered me as much as it could.

Free cupcake from Gigi's for my birthday

Over this past year, I've experienced a lot of changes, new experiences, and growth as a person.  This is one of the few years where I actually feel like I've gotten older.  I left the comfort zone of a job I had for almost three years where everything I did on a daily basis had become second nature to me and moved on to a new position that's given me more experience in some of the areas I'm interested in.  I became a mommy for the third time when we got Saki and had to learn how to balance two dogs who get very jealous of each other and a cat who is set in his ways.  I married my best friend and have never been happier in my relationship with him.  I've also had to deal with spending the majority of my first year of marriage away from my husband as we both adjust to our crazy new life with him in the Army.  I've taken on more responsibility on the home-front and have had to learn to be more patient while adjusting to military life (I don't have a lot of patience when it comes to the unknown -- I hate not knowing things as I am a bit of a planner -- which is probably going to be the hardest thing for me to learn how to handle).

This next year is going to be another one full of changes and new experiences as well as we adjust to life in a new city and I hunt for a new job, in addition to tons of other possibilities we could encounter.  I do have to say that this is one time when I am excited about the unknown ahead of us as I'm ready for the change that our move will bring!