a super successful adult birthday

I have written before of how I've had trouble making the adjustment to adult birthdays. How I still have incredibly high expectations for my special day each year, even though I'm no longer a kid.

Well. I just turned another year older, and here at the start of my thirty fifth year of life, I believe I am beginning to grow in wisdom. Because I nailed it this year. All of my expectations were met because I met my own expectations! The success of this birthday began early in the week when I ordered my own birthday presents. And the presents I chose were all toys that the kids would love. Ivar has been wanting smoker jumpers for his fire and rescue airplane and has been making a case for why these would be great things for me to get for my birthday. He was convincing and in the end, I actually did want these smoke jumpers because I knew he would be so enthused. And then I got myself a play parachute. It's always been a dream of mine, and now I have one which means play dates are going to rock at this house.

The night before my birthday I cleaned the kitchen, baked muffins for the morning, put out a cloth table cloth, hung my own pennants, wrapped my own presents, got the birthday plate out and set the stage for a fun birthday morning. You might read all of that and think it's sort of sad. But it wasn't! I wanted all of that for my birthday and I have let Rory off the hook for my birthday expectations. I actually took great joy in setting the table for my own party.

But before we had our family party, I met girlfriends at our local breakfast place that serves $5 breakfasts. I organized this myself too and it was such a great way to start the day. I'm hopeful this becomes a birthday tradition for all of my friends in this town! We stayed for an hour and then all returned to our homes, where I found my family just starting to stir. Ivar was the only one up and was so excited to begin the day...or more accurately, to open my presents. He was pretty certain I was going to get some smoke jumpers...

Ivar and I waited for the others and read my Bible together. We turned right to Ephesians and read, "Wake up oh sleeper! The light of Jesus shines upon you!" And Ivar thought that was so awesome, because we had sleepers in the house that needed to wake up before we could open his my presents. 

Then we read about how children should honor their mom and dad so that it may go well with them. And then we read about putting on the full armor of God, which he was thrilled to see was in my Bible too, because he had already learned about the armor at kid's church. We put on each piece of the armor and prayed for our day at Lego Land, that we would be a light and shine bright.

Finally the rest of our family woke up and we met everyone at the kitchen table for blueberry muffins and presents. I got to open my parachute and Elsie and Ivar got to open the smoke jumpers. It was all very exciting.

It was 9:00 and already this day was a success. But then we got everyone dressed and loaded up the car to head to A Mall of Themerica...

(I was going to make this a two-part blog, but I'm just going to plow through...)

Elsie picked out her own beautiful outfit for our special trip to the Mall and she was disappointed that I wasn't going to wear a dress for our special outing. It has been a while since we've been to the mall, and I felt like a tourist. We only went to the fun places, and man we had fun. Lego Land was the top priority, followed by the Disney Store. Legos and Princesses. That sort of sums up my kids these days.

Elsie was spellbound by all of the princess dresses and accessories. That store felt so much like Disney World...the smell was the same, the music, the lights, the happy workers.

This was Hattie's first time in the stroller. Which is crazy, but she was born in October and we haven't been anywhere that has required a stroller since. We ran from the car into the mall and she was smiling so huge the whole time. Her eyes were set on mine, trying to figure out how she was gliding along so smoothly. It was awesome and hilarious. And she was incredible the entire day. She napped and smiled and was happy to be taking in the mall. This was when we were in Barnes and Nobel eating birthday dippin' dots.

We ate at the food court and watched the roller coasters, went to the American Girl doll store, watched the fun at Build a Bear Workshop and decided to call it a day. It was so fun and the perfect way to spend a birthday, doing things my family all loves (and Rory was a good sport to even be at the Mall of America...not his first pick!)

So that's the story of my successful birthday. The bottom line: plan it yourself, but plan it for the one's you're with, plan it so it's fun and special and plan it so that it is certain to be a very happy birthday. Here's to 35!