Ryan turns 25!

I had an awesome birthday. Mary Karlee surprised me by
beginning the celebrations on Saturday, 13 Jan. She woke me up at 7am
singing Happy Birthday and bringing me breakfast in bed. I then found out
we had to leave immediately, because she had the whole day planned out -
and I wasn't allowed to know anything until it happened. Everything we did,
though, tied into some previous memory of my life. First, we played
volleyball with some BYU friends I graduated with. (At the age of 2, I
jumped on a volleyball, breaking my leg.) Then, we went to lunch at
Chick-fil-A. (Mary Karlee has long felt that Chick-fil-A insults her
intelligence by obviously misspelling its name. To find out where we were
going, I had to win a spelling bee - the final word was "chick fillet.")
Then Marielle gave me a present: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie on
DVD. Apparently, she got it on ebay for 3 bucks. (I hope the reference to
my childhood is obvious.) Fourth, I was given a card that said "Get your
stroke on" and we took Marielle swimming for the first time. That was so
much fun. As I lowered her into the water for the first time, I could feel
her whole body go rigid. Then she began to relax and kick and splash a lot
with her arms. She's gonna be a natural. (Again, obvious connection.) Next,
we went to dinner at CPK (reminiscent of our first date) and then went for
a stroll at nearby Rice University. We had fun there talking about how I
dragged Mary Karlee back to BYU, when she was really ready to try something
different. At each building, we tried to figure out what BYU's equivalent
was.