My Birthday (even though it was last month)

Steven woke me up with french toast from Perkins:)  Also with scrambled eggs and OJ. My mom came over to bring me my present, another external hard drive (that I needed!!)  Steven had to go to work, but that's OK. Later, Jonathan and Don came over to bring me my birthday crown and another batch of home-made (by JT) french toast:)

He spelled my name with the french toast, and included fruit!  Quite the presentation.

 I thought about all of the places we could go, just the 3 of us, but Dylan picked our own pool, and I was content with that too.  No stress:)

Steven came home early and brought us lunch!  I love the Close Talker from Moe's.

I love Isaac's laugh from the card from Sarah that sings. 

(Here's a picture from the next day - another cake from Dr. Brayer!  And her kids and husband were there for cake too - which makes it a fun 5 min lunch-break-party:))

For my birthday, since it was a big one, I had initially wanted to do something significant.  I didn't necessarily want to spend money, but rather time with close friends and family.  My idea was to all work on a Habitat for Humanity house together.  My brother tagged along when my school did it once, and it was so fun doing things "the Gille way" and being efficient and making it fun. 

I knew that July would be too hot, so I brought it up before, in the colder months, but I decided against the idea after just one friend thought aloud, "well YOU can do that . . ." I didn't want to pout my friends through something that they wouldn't think was fun, so I dropped it. 

Then, on my birthday, there was already a service project on the Young Women calendar.  We were going to clean an apartment for a family who had moved and didn't have time to clean up after the movers so they could get their deposit back.  It was actually for my friend, and I decided not to let her know that it was my birthday.  She paid the Young Women organization what she would have paid a professional cleaning service. 

Anyway, I wasn't excited for spending my thirtieth birthday cleaning at first, but as we were there, the girls brought me a balloon, M&Ms, and cupcakes for us all!  And they were good workers.  I mean, 3 girls took the third floor, 3 took the 2nd floor, and the other leader and I took the first floor and garage.  They did it all in an hour, even cleaning out the fridge.  They were happy to work.  That's exactly what I needed.  What a blessing in disguise:)

Here's the elegant cake that Steven and my boys got for me for after our Young Women (YW) service project activity.

We set the camera on self-timer to take 10 pictures in a row just for fun.

Here are some of them.

and again when my mom got there after a meeting.

but didn't after Don got there again after his meeting.  Busy people.  I feel loved:)