Thirty, Flirty and Thriving!

 Or something like that... As usual, my birthday was fantastic!  I always love the special attention and the outpouring of love and well wishes from family and friends.  The day flew by way too fast and I stayed up well past midnight to enjoy every minute of it. 

The first gift I received was from Leah and Adam- a handful of Hershey's kisses and starlight mints wrapped up in tissue paper and sealed with plenty of scotch tape.  They were so proud of their offering, and helped me unwrap it and eat the candy first thing in the morning. 

Jason filled the house with 30 things he loves about me- I had fun discovering the notes throughout the day, and still have two more to find!

After a tasty dinner, the traditional delicious Milky Way cake and awesome presents, I let Jason herd the kids upstairs so I could get ready for my birthday party!  A moms-only fondue night, and it was just as tasty and fun as it sounds.  In the last year or so (read: since having another child) I've really had to pick and choose the most important things, and sleep usually comes out the winner over just about anything else.  So the chance to eat chocolate and gab with friends was a fantastic gift to myself.  Of course, I had to explain that several times yesterday to Leah, who just couldn't understand why I would want to have a party without her.

Leah and Adam were thrilled to help me open all of my presents, and Leah started ripping into one today before I even had the chance to sit down and take note of who it was from.  I tried to explain to her that she needed to wait and let me open my birthday gifts.  "How would you feel if you got a present and I gave it to Adam to open?" I asked.  "I would like it!" she replied.  "If I was the mom!"

Ahhh, nothing like a fresh dose of mommy guilt to ring in the new decade. 

My goals as a 30-year-old can be summed up something like this- Live it up, let it go and laugh out loud.

Pretty self-explanatory.  I want to make the most of every day I have- who I'm with, where I am, what I'm doing.  I want to let go of the things that I just can't control, like how clean my house every minute of the day or what other people think of me or how my children choose to act all of the time.  I want to laugh out loud a lot.  I always want to laugh more.

I also want to put more pictures of myself and Jason on the blog.  I always like seeing pictures of myself as a kid, but I LOVE seeing pictures of my parents- the hair! the clothes! the overall youthfulness!  It's always so entertaining.  Not that I can really compete with these cute faces-

who took it upon themselves to do make-up while I was happy-birthday-skyping with my sister.