Thirty…

I’ve always been excited about birthdays. Until last year, when I turned 29.

I was that much closer to 30 and it was the LAST year in my twenties!There just seems to be pressure when you know something is your last. A whole new decade of my life was right around the corner and all year I’ve dreaded it. I just feel like 30 means you really ARE a grown-up… nobody ever mistakes you for being younger than you are anymore and every young cashier and waiter/waitress call you ma’am…and they MEAN it, because to them you really ARE that much older than them.

Despite my best efforts to delay it’s coming or to have everyone forget about it, it came anyway…and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined after all. (AND I’m four days into my thirties and haven’t started menopause yet, so I think I’m going to be alright!) :)

I felt cheesy writing “Happy Birthday Annie” to myself on this chalkboard in our kitchen… so I borrowed some words from Alan Jackson instead. :)

 

Friday morning, I woke up to Birthday breakfast in bed. DW had set his alarm for 5:30 that morning to get up and make me pancakes and bacon. He even went as far as to make sure we had bottled cokes in the house…(he knows I’m not much on orange juice, even at breakfast). :)

He also carried with him a bouquet of roses and a DVD.

He popped the DVD in the player and I cried from the beginning.

The movie started with my big girl singing Happy Birthday to me and it was the sweetest thing…Not to be left out, even Mames had a little yell in it. The next 10 minutes were filled with Happy Birthday messages from sweet friends and precious family. It was so sweet.

I had made sure everyone knew I wanted NO PARTY- but DW still wanted to do something, so he had everyone send him videos of birthday messages. It was the sweetest. I seriously, cried through the whole video (and laughed, too)…it made me very thankful for all the wonderful people I have been blessed to have in my life.

The girls and I met Carrie, Allie & Whitt for Birthday lunch. It was at McAlisters, because I turned 30 and we thought we should step it up from last year’s Chick-fil-A at the mall food court. :)

That afternoon, the doorbell rang and a florist delivered flowers all the way from across the pond. Well, from Dunnellon, but they were ordered from England. So sweet of Steph & Henry. On an email earlier in the week, when we were discussing my hunt for wrinkle cream, she also encouraged me to just go buy some new eye shadow because “wrinkle cream doesn’t even work until you’re like 40 or something”… great advice. :)

My day was filled with calls, texts, emails, and facebook wishes for a Happy Birthday and it was all really sweet.

I got some other fun surprises in the mail and from my in-laws, too…

We had dinner reservations that night at Ipanema, the Brazilian steakhouse. My Dad said he wanted to take us somewhere special for my 30th…I didn’t know our reservations were for 3 more people, though!

When my parents got to our house to pick us up, I was still in the back getting dressed. I heard a familiar voice, but it wasn’t my mom or dad’s.

How fun to find my big brother, Beau, and SIL, Kristy and sweet nephew Garrett waiting in the living room!

Me and the two peeps who started it all…

We ate dinner and then came back to our house for cake and ice cream. My mom made an Italian Cream Cake and the toasted pecans in the icing sent it over the top. It was SO GOOD and I just ate another piece this morning for breakfast.

There were THIRTY, count ‘em, THIRTY candles on the cake. I blew them all out and the smoke filled our kitchen. We had to turn on the stove vent to keep the fire alarm from going off. No joke.

I was super excited that my parents got me a Clarisonic… I’ve been wanting one and had told DW that I was going to ask for bday $$ to buy one with. He put a bug in my mom’s ear, and it was a fun surprise! My Dad said he thought it was for “buffing wrinkles out”… Let’s hope it works for that, too!

Some of my sweet Georgia family sent a few surprise with Beau & Kristy and that was fun, too!

I thought DW had already given me my gift (the underwater camera), but in his birthday card, I got another surprise!

A sweet note outlining our weekend plans! So fun!

I went to bed Friday night feeling very loved and very blessed…

Saturday morning we met my parents to drop the girls off and we headed for Orlando.

The first stop on the agenda was test driving a VW Beetle. (My first car was a red beetle and I have always told DW that someday, I’ve got to have another one!)…he tried to rent one for my birthday getaway, but he couldn’t find one through a rental car company, so we did the next best thing. He was even found a dealership that had a RED one! We drove a black convertible one and a silver turbo one. (The red one was parked in their back lot, so we didn’t get to drive it)… I don’t know what was more fun; remembering my youth or pretending like we might actually get one of these soon! Ha! Ha!

We checked into our hotel and since the weather was rainy, I settled in with a magazine and some skittles. It was perfect. I was hoping to get to lay out by the pool and get some sun, but a lazy afternoon was just as great.

After dinner, we headed for Downtown Disney to see Cirque du Soleil – La Nouba.

We were early, so we walked around for a little bit, got some ice cream and picked out a prize for the girls (charms for their Disney bracelets).

Finally it was time for the show. We found our seats and then a couple of clowns came out. It was painfully cheesy and made us really worried about how the show was going to be. Clowns are NOT our thing by a long shot… They make me REALLY uneasy and DW isn’t a fan either. We knew there’d be some faces painted, but we weren’t really expecting the big shoes and red noses, too. After those clowns finished their little before the show- show, the real event started.

It was SO GOOD. I loved it. It was amazing what the performers could do… the music was great and the acts were incredible. After each one I kept thinking, “okay that was my favorite” and then another one would come out and I’d say the same thing… They prohibit ANY pictures (flash or no flash), so I had to sneak and take a couple being the rebel that I am, but that’s the reason I have no good pictures to share. :)  There was also so much going on at one time, it was hard to know where to look. I’m pretty sure you could go back a dozen times and still not see everything in the show! It was so good.

Sunday we slept in late thanks to a dark hotel room. It was around 11:00 when we checked out and we decided to get some early lunch at The Cheesecake Factory before heading back. It’s a favorite of mine, so it made perfect sense since it was my birthday weekend and all. :)

DW even let me stream my ITunes on the way home and he suffered through two hours of my singing. He rolls his eyes at my song collection, but I’m not fooled by it. I know he enjoys it when I’m playing DJ. :)

It was a fantastic weekend filled with lots of celebrating and fun, and if that’s what 30 is all about, then I am in!

~a~