teresa

I had a wonderful birthday this year.  I love birthdays, so appropriately acknowledging and celebrating my birthday is important to me.  This year for the unglamorous celebration of 29 it may have been even more important.

My day started out with my wonderful husband getting up and making me breakfast.  And not just my standard high fiber cereal and soy milk – no he made me french toast with berries and eggs.  I guess the pressure is on for his birthday now!

Then at work I was surprised by Reena who brought in a mini cake for the 3 of us to share and they sang happy birthday to me!  That was so sweet.

We ended our day with massages.  I have been there before and have had deep tissue massages where I felt the pain for weeks after.  So I let my guy know it was my birthday and my end goal was relaxation which he nailed.

Then in the evening I spoke to just about everyone in my family and received a birthday wish!  Friends, family, cake, massage – what else could a girl want?!

Lets see other updates, in the last few weeks we also saw 2 movies. 7 pounds – loved it, cried pretty good and didn’t know how it was going to end until the end, I am so gullible at movies I never detect where the movie is headed.  Then yesterday we saw Yes Man – loved it too.  Jim Carey is awesome although the movie only had a hint of his usual goofiness.  It had a great story to tell of being positive with a  little bit of a love story intertwined – a perfect Saturday afternoon treat.

Yesterday we got to see Stef and Don, had lunch with them in Walnut Creek at Maria Maria – a pretty decent Mexican restaurant and window shopped – that was a lot of fun.

Friday night we went line dancing with Jen and Kris – fun.  We learned the couples line dance the Wooden Nickel.  We thought we would be dancing with our guys the entire time, although it turns out the guys rotate, so we all got to sort of meet some other people, it was a fun time.  After the lesson they played music, we stayed danced a bit – it was another birthday celebration for me and I had a great time.

Otherwise things are pretty good.  We had beautiful weather yesterday and we are expecting it to stick around, life is good!

For those who don’t watch our flickr page to stay up on our wear abouts which I am guessing is probably about everyone except for maybe Deb, here’s a photo update of our recent outings.

Our first and definitely not our last trip to Yosemite.

Christmas in Reno, kids make it all so much fun.

First hike at Mt Diablo, amazing views.

A New Year with new friends!

A tour of the California Academy of Sciences – dorky fun goodness.

you are more excited about the dinner you are cooking on New Year’s Eve than the outfit you are going to wear.  I know I am not really old… Just old relative to my own previous ages, particularly this year turning 29, practically 30.  Anyway I realized New Year’s Eve I spent a lot of time thinking about what we could make and shopping, prepping, cooking and really enjoyed doing all that, and then tried on 2 shirts and picked the one I disliked the least and went with it…

Anyway with the looming birthday and these thoughts of my age, I have been thinking that I think right now is the about the age that I idolized when I was a kid.  I watched people, and people about 30ish seemed to be perfectly situated at least from my vantage point as a little girl.

They had cars.  They had jobs – which meant money and freedom.  They appeared to be so full of life, smiling, laughing, moving about, enjoying life.  I think I am now living that out, my vision of what “perfect” seemed to look like.  Elliott and I make good money even though we can’t seem to figure out where it goes each month.  We have a cute little apartment, carefully decorated with personality and flair.  We often sit and sip coffee at random coffee shops reading a book or magazine or typing away on our laptops.  We walk to the grocery store.  We hold hands.  We wear sophisticated looking clothes, hats and glasses.  We are “living the dream”.  Ok all of that sounds superficial but hopefully you get the idea, we are about as carefree as we could get, minus quitting our jobs and joining the peace core or selling hemp bracelets on the beaches of Thailand…  

So anyway I have enjoyed getting older.  Changing in someways and then not at all in others.  For instance New Year’s Eve I think I transported back in time to the same hell raising, table top dancing, college student I was nearly 10 years ago.  Thank goodness Elliott didn’t tire of my running around like a mad woman Wednesday night.  Not sure what came over me although it was a reminder of times I have tried to put in my past. 

I have visions of even more wonderful things this next year, with perhaps only minor relapses.  I am still working on my things to do in 2009.  So far my list includes:

• A pull up – I want to get in shape!
• Maybe a marathon… still working on if I want to really put that one in ink yet…
• I want to see Guns & Roses in concert – its a long story, I loved them when I was little and never got to see them play live although not for lack of asking, guess I can’t blame my mom for putting her foot down on that one
• And a sake bomb – I didn’t say I didn’t want to party at all its just moderation is a beautiful thing