Thirty on Thursday

Thirty. Wow.  My twenties have been lived and left behind.  I now join my husband and brothers by leaping into my third decade of life.  It's still kind of weird.  Like the day you get married and it doesn't feel any different, but you know things are.  Overall what I'm thinking about is how grateful I am for this body of mine.  It's done some remarkable things over these past two decades.  I'm currently in the process of trying to make it look like I didn't have 3 kids in under 2 years.  Things are wider and much looser than they were.  I'd like to not have muffin top issues, but really to sit back and think about the 3 babies than have grown inside of me (two at the same time) during 2011 and 2012 just makes me grateful.  Not many people experience what I have in that way and I'm so blessed to be healthy now, healthy during my pregnancies and to have delivered healthy babies.  All before 30 - wow.  So I plan to invest in myself this coming decade.  My body has done amazing things for me and I'd like it to last for a good long while.  

So now that I am 30 what will this next decade bring?  Love.  That's what.  Lots and lots of love.  With a sprinkling of peace.  I feel I'm coming closer and closer to finding the center of who I really am and with that it brings such peace.  My friend, Krista, wrote this blog post earlier this month about the Expectation Syndrome.  I laughed as I read it and realized although I'm not totally free of the chains that come along with the Expectation Syndrome, but I certainly am moving in that direction.  I haven't experienced them fully as a parent yet in the ways Krista writes about, but I have as a teenager, young adult and as a married couple with no kids.  There is such bliss in not caring what others think.  So often I find myself rationalizing how I feel or trying to justify it to others to fit their needs.  No more.  I am how I am and I feel what I do, so take it or leave it because those who really matter most to me all sleep under the same roof I do every night.  Like Krista, I feel this Jillian Michaels quote sums it up nicely, "Be yourself.  Everyone else is taken!"
I have to throw this one in too from Dr. Seuss,
"Today you are You, that is truer than true.  There is no one alive who is Youer than You."

I'm sitting alone, on a king size bed with a fluffy comforter in a quite hotel room as I type this.  Dave has given me one of the best presents ever this year.  Time alone to reflect, relax and rejuvenate.  I have done just that.  After being "on the clock" for quite some time now with taking care of our children it is so nice to get away and be in a place where I'm not always listening out for the cry of sleeping baby waking up or the scream of a hurt toddler.  As a mother I know you are always "on the clock" and that is our job, one which I truly am grateful to have, BUT time away is essential to being a good mom too.

My birthday retreat has included some of my favorite things:

Papusas from my favorite El Salvadorian restaurant
Getting a deluxe pedicure treatment

Watching a movie uninterrupted and without falling asleep

Shopping for myself with no strollers involved 

Chipotle steak burrito bowl 

Going blonde, again!

A hot bath while reading a good book

A relaxing massage that I didn't feel was too short at the end (always doing 90 min from now on!)

A soothing facial

Steamy showers with unlimited hot water and not having to dry or style my hair after

Panera salad with shrimp roll (yummy!)

Writing long overdue notes to friends

Taking naps and sleeping in

Relaxing in the sun

Milk Chocolate

Singing out loud to the radio songs while cruising down wide open roads with green trees and blue skies all around

I love myself, my body and my life.  I have been blessed in my twenties and hope to bless others during my thirties.  For it is in the spending of ourselves that we become the richest.   

Life is good!

**I'll add some photos to this post once I'm back home and able to upload them**