Last December I turned 40! I blogged about the effects of being 40 here. I had a lovely Birthday which was celebrated over the course of several days. Somehow Steve managed to be out of town again (he was out of town on my Birthday last year too). That is OK though, I still love him madly and he totally made it up to me! The day before my Birthday the kids and I went to my mother's house. She made a lovely dinner and we had cake and played games.
The next morning (my actual Birthday) I woke up at my usual time. As I went upstairs to wake Zac up for school, I noticed a car sitting in front of my house but to the side so it wasn't easily seen. I kept an eye on it as I went about making lunches. It was getting time to leave to take Z to the bus stop so I went out to start my car (I believe it was like 2 degrees outside or something lovely like that). As soon as I flipped on the garage lights the mysterious car sped away. I had a feeling I was asking for trouble by leaving my van running so I tried to lock it with my spare set of keys but it wouldn't lock with keys in the ignition for some reason. As Zac and I were getting ready to walk out the door I glanced outside and noticed that my van was no longer in my driveway. Upon second glance I saw that it was stuck in the middle of the yard in the snow. My dear friends Alicia and Jamie we furiously trying to unstick it. Those crazy kids! I yelled out the door to them and they started swearing and pushing even harder. Zac (who was about to miss his bus) and I went out to help. Between the four of us we were able to get it free.
This is what I came home to after taking Z to the bus.
And my most very favorite part of all, they left all the trash on the front porch. They also left rolls of crepe paper and more banners. I wasn't sure if they were coming back to finish or not. So I left the stuff there until after I took the girls to school. When it became apparent that they weren't coming back to finish I took a picture and cleaned it all up. They later said they got frustrated because it was so dang cold the tape wouldn't stick and their finger we getting frost bite. Oh, I love those ladies and they made my day with their early morning antics.
That afternoon I went to lunch with these beautiful ladies.
And that night I had tickets to the hottest show in town. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas performance. I went with my three eldest children and we had a very lovely time. We stopped on our way home at In and Out and had ourselves a midnight snack.
The next Saturday the real celebration began. I had been looking forward to this for months. I put it on the calendar and told Steve to keep that day open to celebrate my Birthday. I told him not to worry, I would make all the plans. All he and the kids had to do was show up. We had our Ward Christmas party that morning. After the party I informed my family of our plans for the day. We were going to celebrate my 40th Birthday by doing 40+ random acts of kindness. Our first stop was the fire station and the post office to take treats to the people working there. Then we went to both of our banking institutions to take muffins to the people working in the bank. They still thank me to this day for bringing those in. What a small act of kindness that touched them enough that almost 3 months later they still talk about it. After that we headed downtown. Our first stop downtown was to get lunch. Would you believe this was my real for real actual fortune I got with my lunch?
This is what we did. We had a couple dozen roses, a couple of bunches of flowers, a ton of treat bags we had put together with a nice message attached, and 40 $1 bills. We also had several stuffed animals to give away as well. My kids had so much fun picking people out to give things too. They weren't scared or shy at all. We gave out most of our roses, all our treat bags, most of the stuffed animals. And we gave money to every person on the street asking for money. We were able to help a lady and her daughter pay their train fair without even thinking twice about it or having to decide if they really actually being honest. We had already decided ahead of time we were going to give money to everyone who asked. There were even times when we were driving that we circled around the block to come back to people to give them money.
I was able to sneak this picture of Emily giving a rose to a lady sitting by herself on Temple Square.
Next we headed to a nearby hospital. We took flowers, some remaining roses and stuffed animals and gave them to some of the patients there. When we first walked in there was a man sitting in a wheelchair in the lobby with a nurse. From looking at him he didn't seem like someone I would have approached. Given the appearance of his condition, I didn't even know if he would be able to see us or even know what was going on or even know we were there. Addy really wanted to take him a rose. Stupid me, I tried to discourage her. But she was her persistent self. She went up to him and handed him the rose. He looked up at her and shook her hand and gave her a hug. Later the nurse that was with him came over to us. She said after Addy left he said, "She knows. She knows." The nurse asked him what he was talking about. He said that he used to play Santa Claus every year for many years and that Addy somehow knew. We had to stop at the store on the way home. We only had a few roses left. We took them in the store and handed them out. A few we left on peoples shopping carts when they weren't looking. It was a most fabulous day and one that we won't forget for a long time. It is also a day we plan to repeat soon when the weather is nice.
I want to share this part of the story. I had big plans for this day. I was supposed to start preparing for it weeks in advance. I had grand things I was going to make and put together to hand out. I was going to arrange with several places to go there and do service. I was going to research other big things we could to for service. Well, it was smack dab in the middle of the Holiday Rush and reality set in and I just didn't have time to make all my grand plans happen. The night before I was so discouraged I was going to forget the whole thing and just have my family take me out to lunch and a movie and tell them that was my plan all along. But around 7 PM the night before I was out dropping Aubrey off and a friends house and the thought came to me that I still needed to do this. It didn't have to be hugely marvelously grand. Just simple acts of kindness that would cheer people up and make their day. So I mad a quick trip to Sam's and bought the stuff we needed. It was a great lesson to me that service can be so simple yet so meaningful.
The next week my Secret Society of Sisters took me out to celebrate my Birthday. We had to stop at Costco to pick April up from work. While we were waiting for her to get finished we were standing looking at books. All of the sudden Tricia started hitting my arm. I looked at her and asked, "What???" She kept looking straight ahead hitting me. So I looked up and right there in front of us was President Uchtdorf and his lovely wife. I about died. I made a totally fool of myself and went up to shake his hand and asked if I could take a picture with him. He informed me that they didn't take pictures. His wife leaned over and explained to me if he took at picture with me, everyone would want to take a picture with him and then they would be stuck in a photography session at Costco all night. I was able to snap this great shot of him and his wife walking away.
April finally got off work. We told her all about how she missed President Uchtdorf. Then we went out to dinner. These awesome ladies made banners that had 40 things they love about me on them.
They also made me cupcakes!
As you might have noticed, I made a Birthday video for each family member last year. In all I made 48 Birthday videos last year! My dear Sister-in-Law, Heather, made me my very own video. You can see it by clicking here. You can also see all 48 (49 now) Birthday videos by clicking here. Well I had this great plan to have all my Birthday Videos finished before Christmas and put them on a DVD with all the videos on it so that when people are bored on a Sunday afternoon they can pop in the DVD and relive all the memories. That and I felt that after spending all that time making videos I could totally double dip on the gifts and re-gift everyone their video for Christmas. Well, once again, my grand plans didn't happen. I still had 6 videos to make after Christmas. One of them being mine. I felt a little weird making my own Birthday Video, but I did it anyway. Here it is:
My 40th Birthday was my best yet! Thank you so much to all my wonderful family and friends who made turning 40 one of the most wonderful occasions of my life!
