17 years

We celebrated Jared's birthday over a couple of days.  Alex left for Scotland a couple of days before Jared's birthday, so he missed dinner and cake celebrations.  We did his requested breakfast while Alex was still here (also since Jared had something else the morning of his birthday after seminary).  Presents aren't as exciting when you hit 17 - we had a hard time getting him to tell us anything he wanted.  We finally got out of him that he could use some free weights.  So that's what he got - two 25 lb weights.  It was pretty hard to wrap those things up... I managed to wrap them in a box on the floor in my room, but then it was really awkward to move it anywhere. So I had Owen haul them out the night before his birthday.  He also got a couple of books and the rest was cash.  One of the books was a running book called "How to Make Yourself Poop and 999 Other Tips all Runners Should Know." 😀 

Jared's dinner request was a little random - BBQ sandwiches, vegetable fried rice, and rolls. 

Here is the main story for Jared's birthday this year though.  He was supposed to fly to Scotland the day after his birthday.  About 2 weeks prior to the trip, he still didn't have his passport.  He applied for the passport in early February.  We were told the maximum time would be 10 weeks, without expediting, so we went with the normal option since that meant we had 4 extra weeks before his trip.  Anyway, after about 12 weeks since submission and 2 weeks before his trip, we didn't have the passport.  Alex spent the next 1-2 weeks trying to figure out how to get the passport.  He ended up waiting on hold on the phone for about 1.5 hours every day for a week, with no hope. We tried to expedite the process, but they couldn't offer any hope.  We tried everything we could think of - looking for a place we could walk in and get it that day (even in neighboring states) and even emailing our senator.  The only options for same-day appointments were Seattle (at 8:30am the morning of Jared's flight) and Honolulu.  Those weren't do-able options.  Really our only hope was prayer.  Four days before his flight we found out his passport was being printed.  Three days before it was being shipped from Tucson, AZ.  When the tracking came out, it was expected to arrive by 9:00pm on the day of his flight (3 hours AFTER his flight), so that wasn't going to work.  But we knew it could arrive before that expected time.  The day before his flight, on Jared's birthday, we saw that it had arrived at our local "distribution center" in the afternoon - no address or information on exactly where it was.  Jared and I headed over to our local post office to see if we could find it.  The first person we talked to said the distribution center was a large facility that thousands of pieces of mail go through there and we wouldn't be able to get it from there.  When I pressed about getting it sent from there to pick up at our local post office in the morning, they just said to step aside and "wait next to a door" where someone else would try to help us.  We stood for another 15 minutes without anyone trying to help.  Finally another postal worker saw us and asked if we had been helped.  We explained the situation again and he took our tracking number to see if he could find out where it was.  After about 10 minutes, he walked out holding the package.  It was already there at our post office!  I know this was another tender mercy of the Lord, in being able to get the passport in time for the trip.  So Jared got his passport on his birthday, which meant he would be able to take his 10-day trip to Scotland as well.  Memorable birthday for Jared!