My 30th Birthday

... So about a month before my birthday I was thinking about life and what goals that I could and would actually  be able to reach before I turned 30! I have a huge list of things that I would love to work on but instead of over whelming myself, instead I thought, what is the one thing I could work on that would help me to become a better person? I was inspired by a friend of mine, who on her 40th birthday, she spent the entire day doing RAOK {Random Acts Of Kindness}. She posted a ton of pictures through out the day, and you could see the joy and the happiness that she was bringing to those who she served. 

My goal that I set, and I talked about this in a previous blog post, that I would do {30} Random Acts of Kindness before my 30th Birthday.  The very first thing that I did was, I  made a list of RAOK's that I wanted to do. But  after a couple days I finally decided that this would be way more meaningful if I prayed about it and was inspired. Each morning after that I prayed for inspiration, to know who to serve and what I should do for them.  Most of my RAOK's were very small, like I did my sister's laundry for her, I wrote a bunch of thank you notes to different people,  I donated food and clothes, I left money on a Redbox machine, but by far the coolest thing that I did was when I Gifted my Birthday to the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery. I really didn't know much about the Vanessa Behan before this, but after, I was just so grateful for the opportunity to be able to help them raise money for such a great cause. 

This was such an amazing experience and I'm so glad that I followed through with it! My love for others grew tremendously and towards the end it was easy and very natural to help others around me.

 This was a special surprise from Jared, Ethan & Sienna.  Ethan made the "I love you mom" out of Lego's and domino's. He is so creative!

 My Mom, Heather, Sienna & I went to Old European for Breakfast, after I dropped off Ethan's lunch bag at school.  My 1st Epic Fail Award at 30! I forgot to put it in his back pack before he left for school. When I got to  his school, his class was heading to the cafeteria to eat lunch and he came around the corner, and  was so upset with tears running down his face, because he didn't have a lunch.  My poor sweet little guy! 

 For dinner we went to Fire Artisan Pizza  downtown. Yummm! The food was so  flavorful and delicious! 

 Heather & Laura joined us as well !

Erin Shannon this one is for you! Sienna does this at the most random times, like when eating dinner. She cracks me up!

After dinner I begged everyone to walk with me to Sweet Frostings to get some cup cakes. I was pretty upset that we walked about 6 blocks in the freezing cold, to find out that they were closed. :( 

 Then we made our way back to the mall, where our car was parked. It was a mad house because everyone and their mama came to see Santa!  There were a ton of elves handing out hats, lollipops and bells to all the children. How could I, say no to my children, who, now were so excited... so  I decided to be nice and stick around and wait to see him too! 

 Mean while, I was eyeing these delicious candy apples,  that were staring me in the face and since everyone was so disappointed about the cupcakes, Laura treated us to the Peanut Butter Bomb... and yes it was an explosion of goodness in my mouth!

 Yay! Santa finally came and everyone rang the bells as he made his was way down from the top floor. It was  actually very magically, oh to be a kid again!

We also watch them light the ginormous tree.

 Saturday night, 2 of my sweet and generous friends from my ward treated me to dinner at Twiggs, and I also treated myself to some cupcakes from Sweet Frostings. Seriously if you have never had a cupcake from there, you have got to try it. Saturday from 8-9pm they have happy hour and everything is 1/2 off. 

 Sunday night we celebrated my birthday again with my family!