The Big Three-Oh!

The rumors are true...this was the year I left my twenties. At first, I was not happy with the situation, but over time (and a few encouraging words from people I love and admire), I realized that turning 30 isn't so bad. In fact, it's sort of exciting. So let the extravaganza of birthday fun begin!

The day before my birthday (Wednesday), I was just finishing up the make-up state testing in the morning, and was sending out an email to my collegues about the students being back in class, when I received an email telling me I had a package in the office. I wasn't very excited because I thought it was more testing stuff that I had overlooked. But no! It was a HUGE box of flowers! The card read, "I know it's a day early, but I thought it would suprise you more." My wonderful hubby had sent me 30 tulips for my 30th birthday! What a guy! He even paid attention to know tulips are my favorite! But that was just the beginning. Thursday, my actual birthday, I was standing in the office at school, when the delivery lady came in with the above huge bouquet of balloons and treats. I said, "dang, someone shares my birthday! Must be one cool student!" Then it was pointed out to me that one of the balloons said "30" on it...so it was either MY package or for one very old student! Yup, it was for me! Erin Busscher-Eik made sure that even from North Dakota she could still make sure everyone at work knew that I was 2 weeks older than she is! :)
That night we had dinner at my mom and dad's house: my favorites: homemade chicken salad and blueberry muffins! After dinner was present time! As you can see, my mom gave me some dinero to go shopping with! Since the weather had been too bad for her to go out in the week before to buy me gift cards, she put the money in an envelope decorated with cut-outs from clothing catelogues. Yes, my mom is THAT cool!
Then it was cake time! My mom made me my favorite ice cream cake and even put 30 candles on it--even though Chris and Mike protested that the sheer amount of candles would melt the entire cake before the singing was over. Hilarious, fellas.
Friday, Cort treated me to a GREAT night out! We checked into the new JW Marriot downtown GR for a little mini-vacation. Our room was on the 20th floor with a GREAT view of the river and city. The room was amazing! After check in, we had dinner reservations downstairs at six.one.six. The food was out of control delicious! I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a nice night out! Because it was my birthday, they treated me to a gelato trio for dessert--it was so yummy! Cort got an apple tart and we shared. I felt so spoiled!
After dinner we went back up to the 20th floor. Since we were so high up and in the special section, we had to put our room key in to be able to access the 20th floor button in the elevator. We felt so special :) Back in the room we maxed and relaxed for the evening! This was the comfiest bed I have ever slept on!Cort thought the shower was pretty cool. Next to it there was a spa-like tub. For an extra $49, we could have had them bring a spa treatment up, but that seemed a bit pricey.

The hotel even had cozies for the toliet paper! Now THAT is fancy!

We clearly made ourselves comfortable and did a whole lot of nothing for the evening. It was just like being on a fancy vacation! I SO did not want to come home this morning!