30

Wow.  I used to think 30 sounded old.  It still does I guess.  But I feel the same as I've felt for the last 10 years, or at least the last 5.  

It was funny, a couple of days before my birthday it hit me that I was leaving my twenties, never to return.  I suddenly thought, "have I done everything I wanted to do??"

And the answer is YES!  

It has been an amazing-beyond-my-wildest-dreams decade!  

Since I turned twenty I have accomplished most of my lifetime goals- well, the goals I set for myself when I was 18 or 19.

Some of these included:

Get married in the temple

Marry Eric- this was more of an unspoken goal!

Become fluent in a foreign language (I count my once-conversational Spanish!)

travel to other countries (Mexico and Japan twice)

Coach Cross Country and Track and teach High School History

Run a marathon (3!!)

sing with my husband in church

make a quilt

Have ______# children (3 cute ones so far!)

And I've done so many other things I didn't set as goals.  

Like being on a school board, 

going to Girls Camp as a leader,

starting running groups, 

learning to LOVE primary,

making friends of all ages, 

running a Ragnar,

making hundreds of meals for my family (and we're just getting started, already my boy is a BOY, he's going to eat us out of house and home I know it!)

made friends and 

kept in touch with old friends

and watched my siblings join me in their twenties and be such great friends to me!

Now I'm contemplating the next ten years, as me and Eric's parents get a little older

and our grandparents really get old

and in ten years I'll have two teenage girls (yikes!) 

and be done having babies, 

but my kids will still all be at home and I'll still be kind of young. :)

I'm so glad to know that, baring tragic accident or illness, I'll always have Eric.

I love love love to be with him.  He was SO worth waiting for!  

and he IS so worth waiting for, each day as I start getting antsy around 4 o'clock because I can't wait for him to get home and make me laugh. :)

So now I"m going to set some goals for this decade, but they'll be a little different.

Less about DOING, more about BECOMING.

Less about ME, more about the people around me.  

I want more than anything else for my kids to have testimonies of Jesus Christ and His gospel and be happy people.  And I want Eric and I to always be as happy as we are today and keep growing together.

That's it. Whatever energy I have left, I will give to siblings and parents and neighbors and friends.

But just look at these guys, on the morning of my birthday.  

This is what I live for.

Oh and running.  I also live for running, haha.

 SO for my birthday I REALLY wanted to go on a bike ride up in Provo Canyon.  It was a big pain to borrow a bike trailer and fit all the bikes in the cars and drive two cars and Eric drove down a couple of miles and rode back up to meet us so we could go mostly down hill, but it was so worth it!  Even in the rain! It was a very memorable day.

We started at the Bridal Veil Falls parking lot and rode up to the falls (about a quarter mile- Whitney's uphill limit).  We fed the fish and then Eric and the girls waded in and I got this picture of them:

 Owen and I stayed out and he was being so cute of course, so I took a picture of me and the little drool-face:

 Then we rode back to the parking lot, put Whit's bike back in the car, her in the trailer with Owen, and we were off!... for about 3 minutes, until it started POURING rain.  It had only rained one other time in the last 2 months, so of course we were due for some rain on my birthday. :)  We took shelter under a pavilion for about a half-hour until it was just sprinkling again and we could finish our ride.

 Katelyn then started singing "The Farmer in the Dell" and didn't stop for the next 20 minutes, causing many people to smile as we passed them on the trail. :)

 and Owen happily conked out.

 After a stop to see Katrina and a trip to one of my FAVORITE restaurants, Magleby's Fresh, we went home and Eric let me rent a chick flick. What an awesome day!