Mark's and My Birthdays

My Birthday

This year, my birthday was a fairly low key affair. Mark and I went out for lunch (Red Lobster). In the evening we all went out for ice cream (Marble Slab Creamery). I had cheesecake ice cream with cookie dough in a waffle cone (they make the waffle cones fresh on site). To circumvent a large proportion of the guilt that is normally associated with such indulgences so that we could all the more enjoy the treat, we gave the children a proper dinner, but Mark and I made the ice cream the dinner and ate nothing else that evening (although we did round the evening off nicely with some whiskey/sambuca).

Mark's Birthday

Mark's birthday was the big 40 and was a bit more eventful because the good ol' USCIS picked that day for our biometrics appointment in Charlotte.

For those who are not in the know -- once the USCIS have acknowledged receipt of one's greencard application, one has to travel to one's nearest USCIS office (which in our case is in Charlotte, which is about a three hour drive) to have fingerprints and photographs taken. Our appointment time was 9am, so rather than having to leave home at 6am to get there in time, we drove down the night before. We arrived for our appointment on time, but had to wait a couple of hours to be seen. The actual fingerprinting and photographing took a total of about 10 minutes.

After that, we sat on a grass bank so that Mark could open his presents. Then we went to the South Park Mall for some good old fashioned shop therapy before the three hour drive home. The video shows us having a little bit of fun in one of the department stores.