Happy birthday!

Congrats on becoming an adult! This is the second birthday of yours that we celebrate together, and it is an important one for you to finally be an old person like me! You are officially as old as me now :) at least for a week and a half. Anyways, I am really glad I can witness such an important milestone in your life!

It is unfortunate that I'm not able to be physically with you on your birthday, but on the bright side we can still celebrate it together at a distance. This reminds me of the "spooky action at a distance," but in this case it would be (hopefully) happy actions at a distance! I am really glad that we have been through so much together. It really feels longer than a year, and within this year, we have made many many memories together. Our relationship began from a friendship and has progressed so much to get to the point we are now! From your visits during physics class, to visiting carowinds and riding rollercoasters together, then to taking the bus to walk around Franklin street, many of those experiences marked the beginning of our relationship. In the beginning, I very much appreciated you accepting me as a friend and being willing to talk and hang out with me. Over time, I didn't expect our relationship to progress this much, but I am glad and thankful that it did! We have done so many mundane and special things together, and even when we are doing mundane things, every moment felt very special with you. Thanks for continuing to saturate my life and making it better, and I hope I did the same to you!

Since your last birthday, you have definitely grown a significant amount. Although you still may appear like you just graduated middle school, the ways you act became more grown-up, which I very much admire. Even though sometimes we disagree or even argue, each individual time we do, I feel childish afterwards. You can always dissolve arguments between us and allow us to grow from each time we do. Again, I very much admire this quality of yours, so thank you for always being so supportive and understanding of my sometimes childish behaviors O_O! With you, it always feels like we can be together for a very long time into the future, as you can always find solutions to problems! Furthermore, you are always so responsible, which makes me motivated to become someone as responsible as you. By becoming 18, an official adult, the transition is not overnight but rather you have already demonstrated a lot of it. I cannot emphasize how much I admire you as I reflect on your growth over the year! In the future, I am optimistic that you will do many many great things!

I look forward to in the future when we can finally celebrate your birthday physically together, and doing many more things beyond that! For now though, even though we can't be together on your birthday, I hope this little greeting of mine can deliver to you my best wishes.

Much Love,
Stephen

P.S. If you are seeing this, that means at least something has worked. Sigh, sometimes packages don't get delivered, and that's called real life. I really thought that you would really like your anniversary gift, which is (spoilers!) a shark employee :(, some salt and vinegar chips, and the letter I wrote. I was really really sad especially for the shark employee cuz I think he is really cute and you said you wanted one! Anyways, though I really thought you would like it and was sad that it didn't get delivered, I have gotten over it already and I hope I can surprise you even more with your birthday gifts! If it gets found, that's great! If it isn't, I wouldn't want you to be bothered so much to run all around campus looking for it :(. At least this time I can deliver something digitally more realiably. Anyways, I digress. Happy birthday and I can't wait until you get back!