#helloiamoldnow

I have always been one of those people who loves my birthday.

So when I was watching HIMYM, and the episode starts out by saying "Lily has always been one of those people who loves their birthday. Loves it" ....well. That's when I decided that Lily was my favorite character. 

If you haven't seen it, Lily's birthday starts when Lily jumps up in bed at midnight and shouts, "It's my birthday!" Marshall responds by putting a crown on her head, and they go back to sleep. 

UNTIL 7:00 when she wakes up again and he comes in with breakfast in bed for her!!

And then he has the whole day planned out awesomely! Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I saw this episode and showed it to Stephen, who does not did not believe in birthdays. 

Then for good measure, I showed it to his mom, too. And his sisters. 

And I think his brothers watched it, too.

And I am happy to announce that my birthday turned out even better than Lily's! 

I woke up at midnight (4 minutes after we went to bed, but it's okay), shouted "It's my birthday!" and Stephen put a crown on my head. 

I feel that it is important to note, that even after like 5 conversations with Stephen about this whole crown business, with two days until my birthday I hadn't seen anything that looked even a little bit like a crown anywhere in our house. But when I said, "We have to remember to get me a crown tomorrow!" Stephen went to our room and brought out a crown that he had gotten and been hiding in his backpack. So then I died, and I knew my birthday was going to be better this year than last year.

The rest of the day was absolutely perfect and included all of the following:

- breakfast in bed (monkey bread of course)
- wearing my favorite dress to school

- perfect weather (always Heavenly Father's birthday present to me)
- a birthday sign a la Stephen

- phone calls and texts and Facebook posts and all kinds of virtual love
- 2 tissue boxes wrapped up beautifully with a bow, from one of my students
- endless pictures and cards from the rest of my students

(They are all suck-ups and I love them for it.)

- a gift card bouquet with gift cards to Chick-fil-A and Jamba Juice, and Sharpies from another student
- presents and key lime pie and cheesecake from the Shimp family

Not sure why I can't rotate these, but apparently I also couldn't blow out all the candles on my key lime pie. It just gets harder as you get older....

 - an unplanned (unasked-for, unashamed, underweared) dance by my youngest brother-in-laws. My goodness I am excited for them to grow up old enough to be embarrassed by the stories I can tell about them! (Even though this dance was actually pretty funny....)

 - hand-picked presents by Stephen, including a new outfit and this new coat that I am obsessed with!

Oh, more entertainment.

- a free food tour, which included free food from Firehouse Subs and California Pizza Kitchen, and later on in birthday month, free food from Dairy Queen, Coldstone, Brio, Baskin Robbins, Krispy Kreme, and Schlotsky's.

I love birthdays!! And I love this boy for putting up with my birthday craziness, and going along with it, and making my birthday perfect, and promising to take me to Hawaii next year, and putting on that stupid hat at Firehouse Subs just so I could take a picture to commemorate the free food. He is such a good sport and I can't wait to turn every other age with him.

Except I really can wait, because 24 is plenty old enough for me for now. But I'm just saying. He'll be there for the other birthdays, so that's good.