In April, we celebrated Cpt's birthday in our usual casual fashion. I'm pretty sure we had a typical dinner at home and yogurt from the local yogurt shop. Our little tradition, I guess. We have a new yogurt place even closer now that we've not been to yet. It may become our new celebration hot spot.
It seems like he had been in the Middle East right around his birthday and maybe got back a few days before. My memory of that 10 day trip or so isn't that great. I do know that while he was gone I was trying to think of a good gift to give him since he was about to head back to the Middle East for who knows how long. I put a post on Facebook asking my friends if they preferred the Ipad, Kindle or Nook. Of course, the overwhelming majority of people said Ipad, but I wasn't ready to commit that kind of money to it and since I knew he wouldn't have great wifi access, if any at all, where he would be I thought it not the most practical investment since he wouldn't be able to get full use of it. I was mainly interested in the using it as a reader aspect than anything else. Last time he deployed he probably sent 50 or 60lbs of books back before he came home. I thought something like a Kindle or Nook would lighten his load some.
Through the course of the comments, a good friend of mine from my high school days sent me a message and said that she had a Kindle that she had purchased as a Christmas gift for someone and it ended up being a duplicate gift. She basically had a brand new, older version Kindle still in its original box. She said that I could have it for like $25 or something like that. I jumped right on it and said, of course! She was saving me big time moolah, especially since I was about to go to B&N to buy a Nook just because it's right around the corner and convenient! By the end of our message exchange, she told me that she didn't want me to pay her anything, but that this was her way of saying thank you to a soldier and his family. I was deeply touched and overwhelmed by her generosity. I wasn't surprised, though, because she's the same person that sold me my first car and let me pay her $100 a month until it was paid off!
I couldn't wait to give it to Cpt and tell him the story. I got all choked up telling him how this little blessing had all happened. Needless to say, he was very grateful for his new toy and from what I can tell, it's gotten good use in the desert. I can't wait to have time to read some of the books he's got on it once I figure out how to share them with myself!
Before he left, our small group at church asked me what kinds of things they could get for him and one of the things I told them was an Amazon gift card. I think they gave him a $100 gift card and my mom gave him $100, too. I'm pretty sure he hasn't even had to purchase a book for it yet.
I'm glad we got to celebrate a birthday with him and am even more glad that we'll get to celebrate another one with him in 2012!
Happy Birthday, loverboy! Better a late post than a never post, right?
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