My 30th Birthday Bash!

 I had a wonderful time at my party on Saturday.  I loved having my friends and family all together.  It made me feel incredibly loved and blessed.  I didn't want  the day to end!

CJ helping put up the decorations.  We got the strings of little blue paper lantern lights at Target.  They were on clearance for $5 a string...so we bought the rest that they had (which was 8 strings).  Mom and I made the tissue paper pom-pom flowers.

My festive back yard!

Blowing out my candles! (No...there were not 30 of them!)

 Everyone just relaxing.

 Mom brought photo albums with all my childhood photos for my friends to look at.

 

Our little family (minus Terra...who was inside)

My friend, Julie, and her adorable daughter, Mollie (with husband/daddy Tim in the background).  I thought they weren't coming, so I was pleasantly surprised when they showed up! (there was some Facebook event RSVP confusion I guess).  Mollie is the sweetest little girl ever!  Most toddlers are really shy around people they don't know very well, but Mollie was so friendly and lovable with everyone! I've only met her once before almost a year ago, and she had no problem coming up to me and giving me a hug!

Tim & Mollie

Alan and Dad hanging out.  Alan and I went to high school together and were in the church youth group together...as well as youth counselors when we graduated.  He was my best guy friend.  It meant a lot to me that he came on Saturday!

Kids (and Rachel) playing the classic "keep-the-balloon-off-the-ground" game! 

30 and still jumpin'! (in a dress!)

 My friends' kids had a lot of fun playing with glowsticks!  I was blowing up balloons and putting the glowsticks in them to make them glow, but it wasn't quite dark enough to see them (and by the time it was dark enough, most of the kids had gone home to bed).  But they all had fun with them all the same!

The party winding down... only Alan, Sheila, my parents, and Grandma were left at the very end of the night, and they helped us clean up.

Thanks to my friend Sheila for taking some cool pictures with my camera as I was too busy having fun with my many friends!

 My family and I being silly and playing with the streamers, pretending it was a May Pole (or a "June Pole"?) as we started taking down the decorations. (it was supposedly going to thunderstorm the next day, so we wanted to get everything torn down that night.  It never did thunderstorm the next day.)

It was a good day.