My Surprise Birthday Party Weekend (Part 1)

Recapping our trip to Italy is kind of hard. I want to write it all down, so I remember, but there are so many details and sooooo many pictures, that when I think about sitting down to do it, I get a little overwhelmed. So, I thought I would take a little break, because this week is my 30th birthday!!!! Woot woot!!!!

I don't actually turn 30 until Wednesday, but you wouldn't know it by the way we spent our weekend.

I feel like at this point, I need to give a little back story. Back in the day, when we were leading young life, Derek liked to make a big deal to all our young life peeps about how I am older than him. He doesn't turn 30 until March, so I have 6 1/2 months on him. But he loved to exaggerate and act like I was soooo old. So for the past 4 or 5 years, he has been telling everyone I'm 30. And all his YL guys thought it was hilarious, so they got on the bandwagon and basically every time we get together there are multiple, "Anne is soooo old" jokes. In fact, they've moved past giving me a hard time about being 30 and like to act like I was born during completely different eras of history. So all of that to say, that I've been telling Derek for a while now, that when I actually do turn 30, he better do something awesome, because he has been telling people I'm 30 for years.

So, flash forward to this weekend. I knew he had something planned for Saturday, because a little while back, I was texting with my friends Katie and Ryan, who turned 30 a week before me, about planning a fun joint 30th birthday party for the three of us. Once we started talking to our spouses about this we were told to not worry about it, so we all knew they had something in the works, we just  didn't know what.

Saturday morning, Derek and I went to Josie's for brunch, where Katie and Kyle met up with us and we ate delicious waffles and pancakes. After brunch, we parted ways with our husbands, who were going to take the birthday boy to go play basketball for the afternoon, while we met up with a bunch of our girlfriends at the pool. We had a whole afternoon of sitting around talking, and even though it was a little cloudy with intermittent rain, we got to spend some time in the pool. Our husbands know us well, we love the pool!

After several hours of quality girl pool time, we met back up with the boys and headed home to change for dinner. We arrived at Mi Pequena Hacienda (awesome Mexican food!) where a huge long table was set up for us and about 30 of our friends for dinner. I took zero photos the entire day, but luckily some pictures were taken and instagrammed at dinner. So here we all are, wearing the birthday sombrero.

After dinner, we went over to Kristian and Lucianne's house where there was more snacks, birthday cake, and games and fun friend time. We also did a little birthday photo shoot!

While I knew that we would be doing something with friends on Saturday, I had no idea what all it entailed and who would be involved. The day was so much fun, it was filled with lots of my favorite things, plus so many of my favorite people. I felt so loved that our friends would take an entire day to celebrate with us. The funny thing is, when Katie, Ryan and I were initially talking about doing something for our birthday, we all said we didn't want it to be anything extravagant, we just wanted to provide a reason for everyone to get together and hang out, and that is exactly what happened. We have all been friends since college, and now as we're getting older, having kids, and a lot of us no longer lead YL, we don't have opportunities to all get together and see each other as often. So having this day when so many friends were able to join in was really special. I'm so thankful for sweet spouses who planned our birthday party so we didn't have to, and sweet friends who made it a priority to spend the day with us!