Happy 30th Birthday to Me!

Birthdays of old... oh, how the times fly.


1st birthday


The year I got a dirt cake (hooray!) ... I can't find a photo of the barbie cake.


16th...


21st.


28th.


30th!! (That's me with my 7 month old, Zeke)

Approaching 30 (Part 7)... Birthday Freebies

Less than a week left of being in my 20s! And this week is going to FLY BY, let me tell you. December is always crazy. Good, but crazy. And at this point I think I'm all tapped out on reflection, so now I'm just going to glide on into my 30s.

Celebrations... my parents took me out to sushi when they were in town on their way back home, so I have continued my tradition of birthday sushi. Chris is gonna take me out sometime this weekend if he can find someone to watch Zeke. So not sure if that will happen or not.

Oh yeah, and I'm keeping track of what kinds of freebies I can get on or around my birthday from stores. So far the only good ones I've found are a free drink at Caribou Coffee on my actual birthday, and a free entree at Doc Chey's on the day. A lot of places only give away a free dessert with purchase, which I think is lame. The Gap gave me a 25% off coupon, which is the same as the rest of their promos for the month so that isn't special. I THINK Moe's usually emails a coupon for a free burrito but I haven't gotten it yet, and at any rate I'm allergic so that will go to Chris. So it looks like on Sunday after church we'll be doing Doc Chey's and picking up my coffee.

If you want to plan for your own birthday, here's a national list of places that offer birthday promos.

Approaching 30 (Part 6)... Birthdays of Old

To commemorate the passing of my 20s and my 30-year milestone, I'm reflecting on memorable birthdays of my "youth." Let the nostalgia begin!

One year... maybe around my 11th or 12th birthday, my mom asked me if I wanted a "barbie cake." You know, where you stick a barbie in the middle of the cake and decorate it like a dress. My mom always wanted one but never got one, I guess. I told her no, I didn't want a barbie cake, I wanted a dirt cake. That's where you crush up oreos in some ice cream and hide gummy worms in it and put it in a flower pot and stick fake flowers in it. For my birthday I got a barbie cake. Then I had to pretend to like it. I was sorely disappointed.

For my 16th birthday I was planning a big bash for the Friday after my birthday. So the Saturday before my birthday, my dad took me out to a movie. But there wasn't anything good showing at the time we wanted to see something, so we wound up going to an awful movie with the Olsen Twins and a treasure hunt? Awful. Then we came home, I opened the door to walk inside and all my friends yelled SURPRISE! I just closed the door again. It took me a couple minutes to get over the shock and go into my surprise (a week early!) party. Turns out my mom and my two best friends had been secretly planning for a while, and my parakeet kept almost ruining the surprise. For a week whenever I wasn't in the room he would yell "Surprise!" and my mom couldn't figure out WHY, but was worried he would say it when I was in the room and I would start to suspect what they were up to.

For my 18th birthday some friends "kidnapped" me and took me out to dinner and bowling.

Most of my birthdays since college have been really quiet, because even when I wasn't a college student, all my friends were so they were either studying for finals or had already gone home for Christmas break by the time my birthday comes around. But sometimes I've been lucky and people were still in town.

For my 21st birthday, my roommate threw a surprise party for me and my friend Mandy, whose birthday is one day before mine. This should have been awesome, except I had just become a Christian and had a lot of drama going on (losing friends, gaining friends), so one friend who hadn't been talking to me showed up to tell me that he thought I was doing the God thing all for show and I wound up crying for half the party.

For my 25th birthday we wanted to do a Lord of the Rings marathon. People kept saying they would still be in town when my birthday came along and would come over. But instead everyone had left Savannah for the holidays by then, so only one person came over. We didn't make it through all the movies.

Starting with my 26th birthday (I think), I always go out for sushi on my birthday. In Savannah that meant going to Sakura on Broughton Street. Then the last year we were in Savannah, Chris and I went to visit Atlanta for my birthday weekend and my friend Beth took us to Ru Sans, where they sing to you and give you a $20 gift certificate to eat there later when it's your birthday. So every year since, we've gone to Ru Sans on my birthday.

Last year, 29th, I was pregnant so I could only eat cooked and veggie sushi, and Chris and I spent a quiet date night out. And over my birthday weekend my mom came into town and we went shopping for maternity clothes all weekend. It was great to have quiet girl time to celebrate.

So what does this year hold? Probably time spent with my hubby and my best little man. I haven't thought much about it, though I'm counting on some sushi! Probably a rainbow roll. Hmmm, baby snuggles and a rainbow roll. That sounds about right.

Approaching 30 (Part 5)... Places I've been - Places to go...

Welcome to the next installment of my countdown to the end of my 20s.

Places I visited for the first time in my 20s:

• San Francisco, CA
  
• Washington D.C.
• New York City, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
  
• Cleveland, OH (well, sort of. I was there but didn't get to do much visiting)
  
• Portland, OR
• Oxford, MS
• Dallas, TX
• Myrtle Beach, SC
  

Places I hope to visit before I'm 40:

• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, CA
• Boston, MA
• Luang Prabang, Laos
• Bangkok, Thailand
• Rome, Italy
• Yellowstone
• Chicago, IL
• Austin, TX

Reflections on My 9 Day Fast from Junk Food

This is a followup to my rambling about an 8 Day Fast from Junk Food.

So my 8 day chocolate / caffeine / refined sugars fast became a 9 day fast and was very successful! Why did it become a 9 day fast? Because apparently Day 8 was my threshold... although I still was craving coffee and chocolate (for the taste, not the caffeine) during Day 7, by Friday, when I was allowed to break my fast, I didn't want to. It was strange to me, too, but I just didn't really care about having a piece of chocolate or a coffee, even though we were taking a 6 hour drive with our screaming baby and reached our destination after midnight. So I figured as long as I didn't WANT it, I certainly wasn't going to be silly and EAT it.

On Day 10 I did have a little chocolate, but still didn't wind up drinking any decaf until about Day 12... and only then because I was cold and it was brewing at my grandma's house.

All last week I was at my grandma's farmhouse in rural Indiana (and by rural I mean corn fields are our neighbors and my uncle owns ducks). It was fantastic and I never want to leave when we're there. My grandma made about a dozen different sugary snacks and desserts that taunted me all week, so even though I was allergic to most of them, I still found sugary chocolaty sweet things that I could eat, to make up for all the food I could not. And I did drink a TON of decaf coffee. Like I said, it was there, and I was cold, and it was tasty. But although I indulged quite a bit over the Thanksgiving week, I didn't feel the same need for the stuff that I had before the fast, so I was very happy to have done it. Getting back to normal life is a bit easier now, and it's been easier to cut back down on the sweets.

On the plus side, Zeke didn't sleep any better or act any less rambunctious when I cut down on the caffeine and sweets, so it looks like having them in my diet wasn't really affecting him that much. This makes me happy because that means I don't have to cut them out altogether. He's just a rambunctious kid, plain and simple.