Birthday Part One.

Today is my birthday. I CANNOT believe my life has seriously already made 30 years! Crazy, crazy. It all started 30 years ago by this lady:


She's the most amazing mom ever, and I am so grateful for her for at least a gazillion different reasons.

My birthday really kind of started at about 11:30 last night when Kirsten called and woke me up (amazingly enough I had acutally gone to bed at a decent time for once!) and insisted that I get up and look at her newest blog post. You can see it here. I was really glad I finally got myself up and looked. She is so amazing, and I am so grateful for the strength and validation she gives me!

After such a great night, this morning I woke up and was pretty happy. I even actually got ready in enough time to get to work a few minutes early. Shocker, seriously. Especially with the whole walking boot monstrosity.

Then I opened my front door and was caught in a web of sorts. See illustration below.

I just started laughing as I looked down stairs (the same criminal stairs that killed my foot) and saw this:

And this:

And this:

So I just started chuckling to myself and went downstairs, realizing I was now definitely not going to make it to work on time, since I had to make a way to see out of the car windows to drive.

A man was sweeping the parking lot and had a big trash can with him. So I asked him if I could use his trash can, since everything on my car was soked by dew. He graciously came over with his trash can, and told me that he hated to tell me, but I'm not allowed to have things hanging in the mailroom. I asked him what in the world he was talking about., and he told me this same poster was hanging in the mailroom. He told me not to worry about it, that he would clean it up for me. I told him I had to go see it and take a picture (this is why you should always have a camera in your purse!). This is what I saw when I entered:

The sign was posted on all sides of the beam. So I took them down, and started back to my car. He actually asked me if my friends wanted to make me look like a witch by choosing this picture. Nice. Thanks for the boost of self esteem! I mean come on, I know it's a terrible picture--but it's obviously supposed to be funny! Here's a close up:

Anyway, so I headed to my car and he told me to have a great birthday.

Then I got to work, and started accusing everyone I know for doing this. Nobody was confessing, and I knew it had to have been Shannon. Only she and Sharon have access to this picture, because it was taken when they went to Corpus to visit me while I was living there and we went camping on the beach. I had already called Sharon and was pretty sure it wasn't her.

So I eventually get over to my desk, after showing everyone the pictures. My boss came over and asked if she could talk to me. I turned around and saw this:

Then we took this one:

HAHAHA!! (I was trying to recreate the face in the picture they used.)

We have casual day at work every Friday where we get to wear jeans. There is a big event on site this Friday, so casual day was moved to today. I jokingly sent an email to my immediate coworkers telling them that they should wear "Tribute to Jenny" t-shirts with their jeans to celebrate my birth. AND THEY DID! It was so awesome! We laughed so hard people across the building heard us! They had a shirt for me, so I changed.

Here are the 3 of us who were left in the office at the end of the day--it had been a pretty crazy (in a good, fun way) day:

Here is close up of the face they chose:

I think there's a common theme here, that I take crazy pictures. Hmm. Interesting. And interesting that the crazy ones are the ones people choose to use.

Tonight some of my friends and I went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. And guess what! They are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year! SWEET LOVE! The Cheesecake Factory and I share our beginnings. My love for food (and especially cheesecake!) was definitely meant to be.


Thank you all for making this day so special! I am so incredibly blessed to be surrounded by amazing family and friends, both near and far. I love you all and hope that this next year brings joy and happiness for all of you!

And I can't wait for part II tomorrow! My mom, my sister, and I are all off work and we're going to make a day of it in Dallas, where we plan to go to the temple, go shopping, and eat delicious food! I love being alive!