Birthday

Last weekend I celebrated my 33rd birthday.  It happened to be during my 10 year college reunion/ Homecoming which meant I was in Boston for the weekend, not a bad place to be!  I already posted some pictures on FB so here is one picture of the chapel where I spent many hours of my time in college:

Gordon chapel

 It was a great weekend of friends, family, reminiscing and catching up.  And birthday celebrations!

I realized during this birthday how living in Uganda changed my perspective on getting older.  Generally, in America we don't want to age or look older.  People are hesitant to share their age and it is considered rude to ask.  In Uganda the attitude was more of- Thank the Lord I have made it this far!  What a blessing to receive another year of life!  I think this is partly because the average life span for Ugandans is 54 (I just looked that up, but might have guessed younger).  Also, with life often feeling more precarious and less in control, it does feel like the work of God to survive traveling on the roads, tropical illnesses, etc.   So I am feeling very blessed to have made it to 33 and hope to look forward to getting older and never complaining about aging.

One plus of being Stateside for this birthday was getting to celebrate with my family for the first time in 5 years.  I have always liked having a fall birthday and appreciated that it actually felt like fall this weekend when we celebrated.  Part of our time was outside around this ceramic stove (direct from Maine):

Aiden and the fire

 Then we had a great meal and birthday celebration.  Overall, it was a fun birthday week- thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes.

Family

Also, a quick house update from this weekend.  I had bought a set of table and chairs the day I moved in and had been wanting to re-cover the seats.  It seemed like a daunting project to me, but thanks to my sister-in-law and fabric.com, it looks great!  After celebrating my birthday we got out the staple gun and fabric and covered the seats, below is the before and after:

I put the seats back on yesterday and am very pleased with how it turned out!  It still feels like there are a lot of small things to do in the house, but it feels good to complete a project and see a pretty big difference.