Reflections of a Decade

On this the eve of my 30th birthday, I have a head full of memories and a heart full of love. Mostly, because Kelly, my BFF (it sounds so middle school, but means so much more), sent me the sweetest, most thoughtful gift ever. She and Nate were in cahoots to track down 30 friends and have them write a memory and a recipe for a cookbook since anyone who knows me well knows that 1) I love to cook and 2) I have the memory of an elephant.

I could not stop smiling, laughing out loud, slighty tearing up at points, and feeling special as I read what my friends had to say. THANK YOU SO MUCH to all involved and to those who didn't respond in time, were not able to be tracked down, or may have been accidentally overlooked by Nate (he provided the bulk of the list), let's just hope I live a really long time and you can contribute to a future project :)

Reading all those memories made me want to give every one great big hugs (accept Marlene, because one of my memories of her is that she wasn't as comfortable with affection as I was). I LOVE all of my friends and am SO thankful for the influence you've had in my life and for all the good times we've had.

Unfortunately, in reading through the memories, I had a realization that I'm not as fun as I used to be. Or maybe I'm a different kind of fun. I used to be CRAZY fun. Nate said he'll take some of the blame for squelching some of the silliness out of me. I guess I also just grew up. But sometimes I feel like an old fuddy duddy and I don't like that. Don't get me wrong, I can still get silly and crazy sometimes, but I think one of the goals of my 30's will be to bring back the fun more!

I was thinking that the 20's were a decade that held TONS of changes. The most life changes of any decade, probably. Graduating college, getting married, starting (and ending) a career, having two kids, buying two homes, moving twice, having my first pretty big callings. I am predicting that the 30's won't be nearly as eventful. It will be raising the kids I've got and adding a few more to the mix. I'm sure it will be great and hopefully I'LL change a lot (because heaven knows I need to). I guess that really is my hope for my 30's, now that LIFE is done changing a ton, I hope that I can really focus on changing MYSELF into even more of the person I want to be. Don't get me wrong, I quite like myself, there's just 4 or 5 areas that need lots of work!

Anyway, thinking about this last year of my 20's, I'd say some of the highlights are:

-I re-entered the wonderful world of earrings (I know, I'm starting with a really life-changing one, huh?) On my b-day last year Nate was out of town, so I cleaned out my bathroom and found all sorts of cute earrings. I was sad that I hadn't worn earrings since we'd gotten married because my ears were really sensitive and I thought mostly closed up. I found a pair that were for sensitive ears so I put those in and left them for over a month. Then I started to experiment with trying different kinds of earrings and now I am 100% able to wear whatever earrings I want. For a girl who really loves to accessorize, this has been quite exciting.

-I took up and then pretty much gave up running. You can read all about this truly astonishing turn of events in old posts of this blog. I am still amazed I ran that 5K. I don't think I could do it now unless someone had a gun to my head, but I am SO glad I did it. For the record, the reason I stopped was that I got TERRIBLE neck pain in December and started going to the chiropractor and he said that with my scoliosis, running is the worst possible thing I could do for my back and neck. What can I say, Dr.'s orders. So now when and if I go to the gym, I do the elliptical. (Taking better care of myself physically is one of those 5 areas that I need to work on).

-I started this blog! And this, my friends, has brought an extreme amount of joy to my life. Not only in keeping a record of important events (and sometimes not so important events) and funny things my kids say, but also in getting back in touch with so many old friends and getting to know current friends on a different level. I love to read about the things going on in your lives. I recently noticed that checking blogs is like a drug to me (this actually worries me a little). I feel the strong urge to do it often and it always makes me feel better and more relaxed. I guess there are a lot worse addictions that I could have.

I had hoped that two of the highlights of my 29th year would be that I finally got my house in order, and stopped losing my patience with my kids. But alas, I still struggle with those (much to the disappointment of my mother who excels in the house cleaing area and did much better than me in the patience area too). Maybe by the time I'm 40. Or 31 (I guess I could expect a little more of myself!)

So, I'm headed to bed to continue on my birthday celebration tomorrow. It really started last Friday with a fierce 5 layer chocolate cake that my friend Erin made. Then there was another cake on Sunday with Nate's family. The festivities continue with a special breakfast in the morning, a facial, and then dinner to a surprise place Nate picked out for tomorrow. He keeps teasing me that it's Panda Express, but I know they don't take reservations and ours is for 5:30. There's also a party planned for next week. This is going to be almost two full weeks of birthday celebration. Wow. I'm feeling the love.

Thank you in advance to everyone for making this a very special birthday for me. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends and family. I LOVE YOU ALL! So much.