THIRTY

HEY WORLD!  I'm thirty.  Thirty years old today.  Wooooo!  It is a good day.  Lastnight my husband surprised me with my early present.  Thus?  Here we are today.

I have a few cryptic words to express, so bear with me.  If I do in fact, have any readers at all, who might be reading this, I will say one thing.  NEW YEAR'S!!!!!!!!!!

Back to my regularly scheduled nonsense.

Today I had an amazing birthday.  I can say with utmost honesty that I wasn't expecting my 30th Birthday to be my favorite.  Yesterday I was literally nervous.  I told Adam that I felt like I wasn't living up to my expectations of where I wanted to be when I turned 30.  Seriously.  I haven't lost all the weight I want to lose, but you know what?  I'm still me!  Even if I'm a little bit fatter than I'd like, I may as well try to enjoy myself.

Tonight I was able to spend time with the people I love the most in my life.  My sister-in-law threw me a birthday party and it was so specific to me in the smallest of detail that I can't even describe it.  All the way down to the lemoncello infused champagne with the raspberry ice cube (it's hard to see in this picture, but that raspberry was literally created into an ice cube for the purpose of chilling my lemoncello infused champagne).

Did you notice that slice of cake?  Oh yes.  That slice of cake (alongside the homemade ice cream and lemoncello infused champagne with the raspberry ice cube).  Yeah.  that piece of cake came from this.  Made from scratch by my husband's grandma (who truly feels like my own grandma). 

There are times in a person's life where they realize you are surrounded by people who make your heart burst.  Even if they bust your chops, or do things that take your breath away.

Let me just shut my mouth while you enjoy a few photos of the rest of the evening.

Wooo!!!!  Thank you, to all who was involved in my birthday today, truly thank you!!!

My Heart Feels A Little More Full Today

It is the eve of my 30th birthday.

There are a lot of emotions that go along with that statement.  Tonight at the liquor store (chyeah.) the nice gentleman said, as I was about to walk out the door, "I was about to card you, but ...." and I just about jumped over the counter to hug him.  I don't think he realized I am soon to be moving on to the next decade.

Ha.  What a way to start this blog post.  Considering the fact I'm supposed to be on my 24-day challenge.  Whoops!  We stopped at the wine and spirits store on our way home from picking up my early birthday present.

My husband has single-handedly made my heart fill up a little more today.  He bought me a keyboard for my birthday.

Now, before you begin to think about the keyboards from the 1990s (with the flappy keys) and the crappy beatbox that starts when you push an aqua-colored button, just stop.  Apparently technology has not slowed down even when it comes to world of music.

Background:  My dream is to own a white baby grand piano.  That is still my dream, but realistically we are not in a position to drop 20K+ on a piano.  We have to buy summer rec passes for the kids and monthly payments towards our mortgage.  Someday, when I find myself bored and wrinkled, I will probably be in a position to buy my baby-grand piano.  But that day is not today.

Instead, I was presented with something that, at the moment, is BETTER.  Wait, is AMAZING.  It's a keyboard.  It's a keyboard that feels like a piano when my fingers brush over the keys.  I literally press down on the keys and there is a resistance like a real life piano.  It's a keyboard that has probably 4 billion features and stuff, and things, and. Even though I know a small fraction of what this keyboard is capable of, it's is now a part of my family.

It's a keyboard that allows me to turn the volume super duper low during nap times.  It's a keyboard that lets me throw on a pair of headphones so I can jam out while Adam is watching TV.  It's quite literally THE PERFECT piano I could ever ask for during this phase in our life.  My kids can learn on it.  and if they break it, they will only be grounded for a week for ruining a keyboard instead of a couple of years for breaking a baby grand.

It's brilliant.  and it's now mine.

And while Adam was still assembling the pedals, Sam plopped himself down and was creating a symphony in his mind and my heart just about couldn't contain itself and burst into a million pieces.

I'm ready to turn 30.  I welcome my birthday that is approaching within the next hour.  Because now I get to sit down to my piano and play songs that bring peace and joy to my heart.  That I can now share with my family.

I haven't played since college!  That's over a decade ago!!!!!!!

As I sip on my Mike's Harder Lemonade I feel a huge surge of happy.  There is an amazing little keyboard across the room.  Waiting for me to brush off the cobwebs in the part of my brain that has carefully tucked music away in, and is ready to open back up.  (Did you know that you physically cannot forget music?  Our brains apparently remember forever.)  This makes me happy, especially since I started piddling away tonight and played four songs that I haven't even thought about for over a decade and tonight I played them.  Obviously with extreme room for improvement, but it happened.

I love you, Adam.  There is no way I can simply say, "thank you," for this present for my birthday.  When I say that I feel like my heart feels full tonight, I don't think I can express it.  It's fulfilling a hope and dream to have music in our home while we raise our children.  That they might latch on to some small piece of hearing music and grow and feel love with it.  They might not ever play, but to know that they grow up hearing ME play is the most I could ever hope for.  If they sit down and decide that they want music in their own lives, well.  That means my heart just filled EVEN FULLER.  How is that even possible?  I feel like "my cup runneth over," is exactly how I feel right now.

In a few days I hope that I will have been able to find some coordination within my fingers again, to begin communicating through music again.  In the vessel that I've been using since I was in the first grade, that until tonight has been greatly missed.  LIFE IS ART.  and a huge part of that art is suddenly back in my life.