Happy Birthday To Me!

My daughter Emma and I have birthdays a couple weeks apart, so this year we decided to celebrate together by going to Illinois. Just her and I went for a few days to see Wicked, shop, and hang with her cousins. I have a ton of pictures with my nieces and us having fun, but I posted those on my Facebook account instead of here. So, Here we are after a long day of walking around downtown Chicago all day. Thus we went to see Wicked in our tennis shoes and jeans. We had what I thought would be not very good seats-3rd row dead center. I was worried that we would be looking up at the stage, but we were looking dead on. The only real limitation was being able to take in the whole stage at once. You really had to choose where to look, which was an awesome compromise if you ask me. We loved being able to see the facial expressions, the spit, the sweat, the tears, the veins on their necks pop as they sang. It was incredible. I am lucky though because I saw the musical from much farther back a year ago, so I have both perspectives. Awesome!
The next day we did some eating out and shopping at good 'ole Target. We were having too much fun trying on the much too large for our faces sunglasses and taking tons of pictures in the process. My niece always has to point at herself in pictures, so I had to give it a try.
Then Emma and I went out to the barn with my niece to play with her horse Ellie Mae. It had been pouring rain all day long and we had to slosh thru the mud outside to get to her and bring her into the arena - thus the crazy rolled up pants and the helmet is mandatory at this barn.
Then we had fun hanging out in my sister and brother-in-laws home theater to watch the season finale of Lost and then watch a movie. This was me deciding what movie to watch with my stash of goodies.

So, a pretty awesome birthday made even more awesome because I shared it with my daughter. How many chances in life do you have to do something really special with your kids? I have just recently come to the sudden realization that life is moving far too fast. The years just keep whizzing by and I am realizing that I have very few years left with my children at home. In the beginning they weren't growing up fast enough and now they are growing up too fast. I can hardly believe that I am 35 years old with 4 kids ranging in ages from 3-11 (can't forget about the awesome hubby too). When did that happen? The number doesn't really bother me I am just starting to realize that I need to make the years count and enjoy them more.

I think I have had a pretty full and generally happy 35 years with hopefully many more birthdays to come. I feel like the older I get the more comfortable I get with being myself and the more uncomfortable I get with the things I know I need to change about myself. This whole life thing can be pretty complicated. But, as you can see from the pictures I love to laugh and have fun and act like a teenager sometimes- so, I'm not all that grown up and hope to never be. Happy Birthday to me!