Thank you for the birthday wishes everyone! My amazingly supportive sister made me tear up on Friday from a wonderful birthday card. Also, thanks to the efforts of some awesome people I had a fun two days of celebrating my birthday 🙂 Some highlights included dinner and drinks with friends with a very interesting live DJ (who made me feel old when I was one of the only people who knew who the Bee Gees were), a fun day of shopping in the NW suburbs of Chicago, consuming an amazing gluten free/dairy free birthday cupcake, finding some great buys at a consignment/resale shop and talking the owner into giving me a 10% birthday discount, a movie outing (Finding Dory), a quick stop for some sorbet, a walk along the river, and.. of course I stopped at Starbucks and got my free birthday latte earlier on Saturday. All that, and I still get to celebrate with my kids next week too when they are back from camp.

Finally, today I went out shopping and got an orange top at Old Navy, then later had an amazing steak dinner with my Mom and Dad to celebrate Father’s Day. My Dad, though loving and supportive, is still coming to terms with my transition. He and my Mom came to meet me at a packed Longhorn Steakhouse and we had a great dinner. If he was uncomfortable at all, it didn’t show. The last photo was the outfit I wore at dinner. The first time I saw my Dad as the real me, I ‘toned it down’ a bit. Even though I decided to change out of my tank top that I wore shopping, I still went with a very flirty and fun top (last pic). I hope Dad is still feeling okay tonight after experience “The Full Ari” 🙂

There are some amazing things that might be happening soon in my life that I don’t want to talk about just yet in case they do not in fact happen.. so stay tuned..

-Ari