By Anna Kuhn

The first birthday gift I ever gave Kurt was a home-cooked meal. We were third-year law students, and though my normal repertoire consisted largely of ramen noodles, I managed to make chicken marsala. We ate on a card table in my tiny New Haven apartment, and then indulged in a carrot cake I made from scratch, every carrot laboriously grated by hand. As we remember it, everything was delicious, although it was probably only mediocre by any objective standards. If I gave him any other gift that birthday, something purchased from a store, we’ve completely forgotten it.

Fourteen years later, we still love homemade gifts in our family. To be clear, we also like shiny things that come in pretty packages. But honestly, the things we create for one another are always the most memorable. And if there’s an element of sneakiness or surprise, that’s even better.

That’s why I put together this collection of 40 photos to show at Kurt’s 40th birthday party. Kurt had never seen many of the photos from his childhood; his mom secretly sent me scans of old family slides that have been boxed up for decades. Sorting through those, plus the thousands of photos we’ve collected during our marriage, yielded some that are sweet, some funny, and yes, maybe some that are a teensy bit embarrassing, too. (You be the judge of which photos fall in which category.) It’s clearly an amateur production, but to our family, it’s something special.

Thanks for celebrating Kurt’s 40th with us.

40 Photos for Kurt’s 40th from Kurt Kuhn on Vimeo.