31 Years Young

This past Friday was my birthday.  My first year in my thirties officially completed.  The celebration actually started last weekend when I got my first gift.  Last Saturday morning my boyfriend and I were haning out on the couch in the living room wathcing tv and he asked if I wanted to go shopping for a laptop.  My laptop was 4 years old, had a dead battery and a busted jack for the power cord.  You had to very carefully place the chord into the jack and then you could't move or else it would lose its connection.  It was also super slow from all the crap that was put on it over the years.  I had been talking about purchasing a new one for a little while.  When he asked me about shopping I said I wasn't sure because I wasn't sure about spending the money on one right now when I could still limp along with my current one.  And what was his response?  "Well, I was planning on buying it for you.  For your birthday."  My immediate reaction was that I couldn't let him spend so much on my gift.  After some minor cajoling I agreed to go.  What harm could there be in just looking?  A couple of hours later we were at the store and he was purchasing me a new hp pavillion laptop.

So that was the beginning of the birthday celebrations.  I had a couple of particularly stressful days at work last week so on Thursday I decided at the last minute that I wanted to take a half day vacation for my birthday.  Luckily I work for an awesome company and have an awesome boss who approved the last minute request.

On Friday morning I woke up next to my favorite person.  He sang Happy Birthday to me while we were still in bed.  Before heading off to work he gave me a card and a bag of miniature dark chocolate reeses peanut butter cups.  The boy knows what I like.  :)

I went to work in the morning on Friday, was fairly productive but relaxed, and just worked on what I could with very little stress.  Nearly everyone I saw wished me Happy Birthday.  I also got several emails and instant messages from co-workers and people going out of their way to stop over and wish me a happy birthday.  At 12:30 I headed out to lunch with my boyfriend and another friend of ours.  After lunch I headed home.

I was a little silly and decided I needed to spend my afternoon off on my birthday cleaning my entire house (including removing the shoe scuff marks on the kitchen floor with Magic Eraser).  The original plan was to have my parents and 2 of my sisters and their significant others come visit on Saturday to celebrate.  On Wednesday or Thursday I heard from my mom that my dad was really sick with a terrible cold and they might not be able to make it.  On Friday morning they confirmed they couldn't come.  They would try to come next weekend.  And one of my sisters decided that they would come next weekend as well.  CRAP! 

I tried not to let it get me too down.  So after my boyfriend got home from work we went for a nice walk and then met a couple of friends at a nice Italian restaurant.  One friend we met was an old friend from college who I hadn't seen in quite some time so it was great to catch up wtih her.  We ended up staying at the restaurant for almost 2 and a half hours.  And I had an awesome piece of chocolate torte to top off the evening. 

Even though my parents and older sister were not able to make it on Saturday my younger sister and her boyfriend still wanted to celebrate.  So they, along with my boyfriend, treated me to a nice dinner of Thai food.  After that we hung out at my house (so the thorough cleaning was wothwhile afterall) and had a few drinks and played some Scattergories.

So BIG present last weekend, lots of good food and good company this weekend, and (hopefully) more celebration with family next weekend.  Overall, a successful 31st birthday  :)      

lots of birthday cards from wonderful friends and family