Turning 30 - Wow, I'm old

My 30th birthday has come and gone.  Man - that really does seem to be a large number.  Most of all I can't believe that my three older siblings are old enough to have a 30-year-old baby sister and that my parents are old enough to have four kids in their 30s.  For me - I don't feel much different and I'm pretty sure my maturity capped at about 11.  So not much difference now. :)

I did quite a few different things and celebrated over a period of about a month.  That's pretty typical for me.  I went to visit my sisters in Arizona (that will be a later post), went for a night out on the town with my friends and was sung to at Pack Meeting.  But my actually birth-day, the 24th was reserved for Mom.

We left the house Sunday morning and decided to go find some fun.  We'd reserved a room down at Thanksgiving Point (forgetting that this was Utah and it would be closed.).  I had wanted to go to Hogle Zoo to see the new Polar Bear exhibit so we went there.  Well - believe it or not, a beautiful Sunday afternoon is a very, very busy time at the Zoo.  I don't like crowded zoos, it ruins some of the experience for me if I have to bulldoze past little kids to see the animals, so I told Mom that I would rather go to Lehi and come back to Hogle on Monday.

So we decided to grab some dinner.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a restaurant that is open on Sunday in Happy Valley?!?!  Even the Chinese restaurants are closed.  Crazy, crazy.  Anyway, we finally were able to eat at Teppanyaki.  It was fun (Mom especially liked it.)

After that we went back to the hotel room and watched a movie.  Oh yeah, we know how to have a good time.

September 24th started off with Mom jumping on my bed to wake me up.  Yes, she really did that.  And yes, it was earlier than I would have preferred to wake up. :)

After that we grabbed some breakfast,

That's right, I still (and always will) eat kid's cereal over anything else.

Then it was time to hit the zoo.  Anyone who knows me (or if any strangers happen to stumble into my blog) know that I LOVE ZOOS.  In fact, if I lived out my dream life scenario, I would be working at one.  But until that happens, I will continue to visit when I can.

Hogle Zoo recently opened up a newly remodeled Bear section.  So we spend the majority of our time there.  The bears were being really active and seemed to be having such a good time.

 We also managed to go say hi to the cats.

 And the elephants

 But came back again to the bears.

 How can you not love faces like those?!?!?!?!

After a few hours and some lunch at the zoo, it was time to head back home.  Mom was acting kind of suspicious, so I started to wonder if there wasn't something waiting for me back there.

And I was right.  Dad had been busy and was in the starting stages of getting the house decorated for my birthday.

 And then the even bigger surprise happened when people started to show up looking for cake!  That's right, Mom managed to pull of a surprise party for me!

 It was mostly people from the neighborhood, our book club, some of the Young Women and families from the ward and our neighbors.  A very pleasant surprise.

Everything considered, it was a good birthday.  I think I should turn 30 more often. :)

Oh, and the celebration didn't stop there.  The next day I got into work to find this:

 Maybe my coworkers do know what my personality is. :)

Thanks everyone for such a great year and 30 great years before that.  I love you all!!!