On Our Way To Crazy

You guys. YOU GUYS.

I’ve been thinking for two days about how to start this post. And the only thing I keep thinking is “YOU GUYS”. Because, seriously? You guys? My 30th birthday was one of the greatest days of my life.

First let me give you the highlights of the morning and afternoon: candy for breakfast, birthday cake in staff meeting, delicious avocado BLT and prosecco sangria at lunch with Becka, shoe shopping, magazine reading, mani-pedi. Already a pretty amazing day, right?

The plans for the evening had been a closely guarded secret for the past several weeks. I knew there was a party, and I knew I needed to dress up a bit, but that was it. I didn’t know where it was, or what was happening, or who would be there. Nothing.

So I’m getting dressed, stressing out about what shoes to wear and will I regret the heels and does this dress need a necklace and why am I 30 but I don’t know how to do my hair, when Becka comes over to pick me up. We are heading out the door when she gets a text, stops, and says, “Hey! What’s that big box on the counter?” Clearly whatever we were on our way to do was not ready for us to do it, so she was stalling. We then spent a very fun half hour opening my birthday box from my mom.

(Sidenote: have I ever fully explained the birthday box to y’all? Oh, man. You are so gonna wish my mom was your mom. Every year on my birthday I get a big box wrapped in brown paper. The paper comes off to reveal a big cardboard box covered in magazine clippings… pictures, quotes, drawings, all kinds of things. This year mine had about a thousand “30″s on it, along with pictures of New Kids On the Block. So great. You open the box to find a ton of birthday presents – some big, some small, several funny – all individually wrapped in coordinating wrapping paper. My mom rules at gift giving. Next time I see you I’ll show you my freaking awesome hot pink watch and my budding collection of Penguin Classics.)

So! We finally get in the car and head downtown. We park in a lot near a bunch of buildings I have never been to. I am totally confused. We come around a corner and walk past a random storefront, and I look in the window and see, you know, EVERYONE I KNOW. So fun. We walk in to this amazing building, someone puts a hot pink boa around my neck and a glass of wine in my hand and I start hugging and squealing and laughing and all the things you do when all your favorite people are in one place.

And then. THEN. I walk into the next room, expecting the people in there to be more of my people, and stop dead in my tracks. Because Don and Lori Chaffer are there. WATERDEEP IS AT MY PARTY. I, of course, start crying immediately and further embarrass myself in front of them. They hug me and we talk for a minute and then I think I should just go right ahead and die.

But I don’t, and it’s a good thing. Because after everyone got their food (Baja Burrito!) and sat down, they got on stage. And played an acoustic set. Of all my favorite songs. For me and my friends.

WHAT.

Let me make sure I am setting this scene correctly for you. I am sitting at a table in an amazing old building in downtown Nashville. On that table I have wine and pineapple salsa. I am surrounded my my favorite people in the world. And ten feet in front of me, my favorite band of all time is playing a private show with a set list comprised of only my favorite songs of theirs. Are you with me?

One of the greatest moments of my entire life. Ever. EVER.

(The set list, for those of you who care about this kind of thing, and if you don’t, well, I don’t know if we should be friends anymore: Heart Attack Time Machine, Oh, Close the Door, Good Good End, Both of Us Will Feel the Blast (this is where I started crying, you know, AGAIN), Sweet River Roll, Everybody’s Guilty, Sink or Swim, He Will Come, Everyone’s Beautiful. Oh, and Happy Birthday.)

The rest of the party was pretty freaking great, too. The birthday cake was adorable and delicious and apparently made by “a stout old lady named Joyce who will be making all our cakes from now on”. The music playing overhead was a playlist of songs I love, which I knew in my head but still said “I LOVE THIS SONG” every time a new one started playing. We laughed and danced and talked and ate and it was so so good.

And then there was a photo booth.

My awesome friend Becka put together a collection of props and everyone took pictures with a little polaroid camera and attached them to notes for me. I am working on getting those scanned in, but in the meantime, here are some of my favorites from my digital camera. I think I should carry around a foam handlebar mustache all the time.

It was an incredible, incredible night. Aaron went way above and way beyond anything I could have imagined or deserved. I have pictures to prove it and I still don’t fully believe that it even happened. I married good.

July 1 – The flamingos are over! Oh, happy day.
July 2 – Got a lot of work done for the new youth service.
July 3 – Art crawl and Sweet Cece’s with Aaron and Becka. Excellent night.
July 4 – Swimming, grilling, good friends and a spot on a backyard deck that let us see fireworks in all directions.
July 5 – Tons of new kids came to our ultimate frisbee night.
July 6 – Aaron made a really hard decision today. Right, and good for us, but really hard.
July 7 – Surprise lunch with a friend.
July 8 – We went to a birthday party for one of my favorite people. It included a Waterdeep concert. Seriously.
July 9 – Watched one of my awesome kids totally smoke the competition at a swim meet.
July 10 – Last minute camp planning scramble.
July 11 – Our last Sunday morning youth group. Sad but fun. Exciting things on the horizon.
July 12 – Camp day! Whataburger! Stressful check in time! Exhaustion!
July 13 – Stayed up way too late talking about major stuff with a few of my middle school girls.
July 14 – It poured down rain on us when we tried to go to the waterpark. Water slides in the rain are fun.
July 15 – I watched some of my most shy kids have long conversations with intimidating homeless people.
July 16 – Great, emotional senior time on the last night of camp.
July 17 – We made it home safely! On one hour of sleep!
July 18 – Lunch with my college girls, some I hadn’t seen in ages.
July 19 – First Monday Night youth service! So good! So fun! So much pressure!
July 20 – Oh my gosh, I was so sick. I fell asleep in a meeting. But then I got to go home and sleep in my bed, which was much better.
July 21 – We sold a ton of stuff on craigslist. Thank you, internet.
July 22 – Day at the lake with the youth group girls!
July 23 – Went to the Bluebird Cafe for the very first time. It’s a pretty amazing place.
July 24 – Lazy, lazy Saturday.
July 25 – I got to hang out with our fourth and fifth graders at church. They are awesome.
July 26 – Eight years! We celebrated with brownies and champagne.
July 27 – Our friend had a huge showcase and she rocked it. So fun.
July 28 – I found a long lost groupon and we had amazing margherita pizza.
July 29 – Spent all day on the parents of our upcoming 6th graders. So excited.
July 30 – Really great night with old old friends.
July 31 – Fun last minute late night dinner with friends.

It’s the last week of my 20′s. I am almost officially old. OLD. A real grown up. This does not seem right.

I’m feeling pretty good about it, really. I’ve been having a lot of those wine- and music-fueled evenings where you talk, not about life, but about LIFE and where you are and where you want to be and where you thought you would be and is this the right path and should I maybe go somewhere else and what happens from here. It’s hard to know, though, if those would be happening anyway, given the way the past few months have shaken out in the Manes house. But that’s a post for another day.

I have a feeling 30 is going to be good to me. But first I need to squeeze as much as I can out of 29. So far that includes a Josh Ritter show, a trip to Holiday World, a Waterdeep show in the park and knocking out as much of my list as is humanly possible in seven days. Sounds pretty good.