Best. Birthday. Ever.

I turned 25 a week or so ago. Woo! 25! Maybe now I can *start* to feel like an adult?

Anyway, I've been really excited about turning 25 on the 25th since I was in high school and my friend Amanda turned 16 on the 16th. For her "golden birthday" she got 16 presents. Cool, right? So...I always thought it would be sweet to have my own golden birthday, and not just for the presents.

Poor Brent has had to put up with my relentless "reminders" that my 25th birthday was approaching for probably the last 3 years. Now, I'm much more tactful than to insist on 25 presents (because I honestly don't expect OR need that much), but I think I did get a few hints out there that I wanted him to make a big deal of it. And boy did he deliver! Must be because his family does the whole "golden birthday" thing.

He is always really great around my birthday. In fact, for the past couple of years, since he's had exams near my birthday he makes sure to tell me "Happy Birthday" everyday starting around the 10th of the month. Strange boy. This year it was on a Sunday so he took Charlotte and I out to dinner the night before.

On Sunday, after he finally got home from church (he was gone for like 8 hours) he cooked dinner.

While dinner was in the oven we carved pumpkins which sadly got rained on that night and turned to mush with in a matter of days. Brent's is the big one with the giant smile. He free handed it and was finished in less than 5 minutes. Charlotte and I took a bit more time drawing and planning. Mine is the one in the middle. By the time I got the pictures taken, she was kind of mushy so you can't see her tiny vampire teeth anymore but she is cute nonetheless. Charlotte's makes me laugh. It's so goofy. It looks like it's saying something dumb.

Brent inhaled his dinner and then ran upstairs while Charlotte and I finished eating. About 10 minutes later, he called me upstairs to help him with something. I walked into the bedroom to find 25 individually wrapped presents on the ground that he needed help carrying downstairs. I was totally surprised because I didn't expect it and he'd been so busy with work and studying I didn't think he'd even have time to get me a card. All of the boxes could have been filled with socks for all I care because the best part was that Brent was so excited about it and proud of himself for being so sneaky. He put so much thought into it.

There were all kinds of gifts. Here's a small sample: chapstick, hair rubberbands, chocolate, cookies, travel guides, tickets to Les Miserables, and about 1/3 of the gifts were pictures of things he either didn't have time to buy or didn't know what to buy like boots, a dress, a winter coat, an external hard drive to backup all of our pictures, a coupon for a bookstore so I can get a proper English cookbook, and lots of other things. The funniest part was that the picture gifts were all wrapped in random containers from around the house. One was wrapped in a cup, one was in the box for my tripod, one was in the cell phone pouch Brent detattached from his backpack...

Charlotte got me chocolate and The Pursuit of Happyness. And throughout the week before and the week after I got presents and cards in the mail from various family members (Thank you!!). Brent's family sent me a package with all of the materials and patterns to make a cute stuffed animal and this wall hanging.

After the presents we talked to family on Skype and one of my very favorite things from the whole day (possibly the whole month...year?) is when the Gordon girls sang me the birthday song. It was SO cute! Man, I love family!!

So to sum up: I'm *finally* 25 and I had the best birthday ever. Seriously, I haven't had that much fun on a birthday since my mom threw me awesome themed parties when I was little.