Over the Hill

Last Wednesday was my thirtieth birthday.  Yes, you read correctly.  In the last month we have celebrated everyone's birthday in my immediate family.  My sister's just the day before mine!  It's a crazy time of year for us...and one month later - Christmas!

So, my thirtieth birthday.  A birthday I'd been dreading; I'm not gonna lie.  But I have to say, all in all, it hasn't been nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  I actually feel very happy with my life in its current state, and I certainly don't feel old (you know...minus that whole witchy stripe of gray hair that is hiding on the back of my head).

{note the backpack}

My birthday began with a car trip to North Carolina.  Jack was so excited to go on a trip, but he had a hard time understanding that we wouldn't be flying anywhere.  I think he was really looking forward to an airplane ride, so we felt badly to disappoint:)  He did so well in the car though - we were so proud of him!

{Jack explored the leaves in Great-Grandma Earlie's yard}

We stopped for a break and for lunch several hours into the trip, and we let Jack get out and run around with the puppy dogs to get some exercise and work out some of that energy.  I had just found a perfect place to start shooting some photos of my little man and his daddy when I big construction truck pulled into our shoot and ruined the back drop.  At least I kind of got the one cute picture from above!

When we arrived at Grandma Earlie's, we spent some time playing outside in the leaves.  It was a beautiful day, and I'm pretty sure Jack had never seen so many leaves in one place.

As you can tell, he absolutely LOVED it.

And I was loving it too because oh.my.word.  Look at these pictures!

I have to be honest - I'm not sure who loved it more.  Jack or Belle?  At one point, she was completely covered in bits of leaves.  It was pretty funny.  Gracie, of course, was not nearly as interested.

{Jack and Grandma}

{The birthday girl and Jack - not wanting to take a second away from playing with the leaves to take a picture with his mama}

After we relaxed a bit from our trip, we headed out to dinner at a little restaurant on Main Street in a tiny little town.  It was adorable because everything was decorated for Christmas, lights on the street signs and everything.  Jack thought it was very pretty:)

Dinner was very good, but dessert?  To.Die.For.  French Silk Pie like I've never had before.  It was perfect.  

We came home, and I opened my wonderful presents (mentioned here).  It was a great birthday, and the only thing that would have made it any better would have been to have had my family there as well.  It's very hard to be away from your family on your birthday, and when I was homesick then I started thinking about how one day Jack will be all grown-up and not home on his birthday, and what in the world will I do?  So I called my mom and we chatted - it definitely helped me feel better.

The rest of our Thanksgiving trip was great as well.  Thursday was relaxing and tasty; everyone really liked the table I set (especially the whole leaves as place cards idea).  On Black Friday, Brad and I had a chance to go shopping together while Grandma watched Jack, and that was really nice for us to have a chance to hang out together and do some shopping alone.  Then on Saturday, we came home and as we pulled into our development we asked Jack if he had fun on our trip: 

No, I want to go swimming.  We gonna go in a airplane?

Hmm...we quickly discovered that when we said we were going on a trip, Jack apparently combined the only two trips he remembers (our flight to Cleveland and our vacation to Virginia Beach when we planned a fun event for each day), and was expecting a much more exciting adventure.  Poor thing.