blendy's birthday bash

You only turn 21 once.

To celebrate her 21st birthday, Blendy and I spent a fabulous weekend in Wichita. This was supposed to be a surprise, but she guessed it months ago when I said, "You'll never guess what I have planned for your birthday!" She proved me wrong with the very next words out of her mouth: "You're taking me to the Warren to the balcony theater."

I hate when my sisters guess their gifts! I suppose I could have changed it to something else, but I was anticipating it as much as she was, so I just went with it.

Due to our crazy schedules (work and speech), we couldn't actually go for her birthday, so we went a month later. And it was the perfect weekend to travel—temps in the 80's the entire time!

We left on Saturday morning and arrived in Wichita around 3. Our first stop? Chick-fil-A, of course!

Forgot to take the camera or phone inside the restaurant ... and apparently we don't know how to turn our cups to show the Chick-fil-A logo, either. You'll just have to take my word for it that we stopped there!

Then we checked into our hotel—The Hampton Inn & Suites on Greenwich. Nice hotel. It was also the site of a wedding reception on Saturday, and when we arrived, several guests were well on their way to getting wasted. Fortunately, we had our own plans on Saturday night, so they didn't bother us at all!

We met up with cousins Jon & Lauren for shopping, a movie, dinner, and drinks. (Never fear, Mom—Blendy and I drank Diet Coke!) It had been a long time since we'd spent any real time with them, so it was nice that they wanted to come hang out with us!

We saw Mirror Mirror at the Warren ... it had a decidedly Ella Enchanted vibe to it,
thus ensuring cousin Jon's enjoyment!

We had supper at Il Vicino Wood-Oven Pizza. It was excellent pizza. And the cannoli? To die for! 

We went back to Oscar's Lounge at the Warren to hang out a bit longer. The paintings on the wall are of movie stars, and there's one that I swear looks like Chris Harrison ... I didn't snap a picture, but if you follow this link and scroll to the last picture, the painting of "Chris" is on the left. If you know who it's really supposed to be, please tell me!

On Sunday, we got down to business—the business we went to Wichita for—we saw The Hunger Games in the Warren's balcony theater! Ever since we started going to the Warren several years ago (I think Pride & Prejudice is the first movie we saw there, so it's been a while), Blendy has wanted to go to the balcony theater. Since you have to be 21 to get in, we had to wait. Until now.

Trying to decide what to order. She ended up with a pizza; I got a grilled chicken sandwich.

I think it was everything Blendy was hoping it would be—huge screen, food & drink service at your seat, and a great view. However, she didn't get carded, which I think was slightly disappointing!

Then, we went shopping at Bradley Fair. Following a fair amount of window shopping, we ended up at Cocoa Dolce, a local chocolate shop, where we each purchased three $2 chocolates. They were really good, but I'm not sure I'd pay $2 for a tiny chocolate again!

Left to right: Sinful Mint, Lemon, and Mocha.

Then we made my favorite food stop of the weekend—Marble Slab Creamery, where I got a scoop of lemon frozen yogurt. It tasted exactly like the lemon ice cream my grandma used to buy me at Braum's. Speaking of Braum's, why on earth didn't we stop there on the way home?

Given a choice between lemon and chocolate, I'd choose lemon nine times out of ten.
Why isn't there more lemon ice cream in this world?

Next, we started the serious shopping—Barnes & Noble, World Market, and Target ... with another movie thrown in for good measure! After spending more money than either of us intended, we headed back to the hotel to relax and snack on the insane amount of food we bought at Target. (If you're wondering, I took a complete break from my diet over the weekend. As if you hadn't gathered that already!)

Time for snacks, Battleground, and toenail painting!

On Monday, we slept in, hit Chick-fil-A once more, and headed home. We stopped at the visitor's center in Belleville (the last town before the Nebraska border), where I picked up some Jayhawk earrings to match the ones Blendy bought on our way down. I had high hopes for the championship game ...

All in all, it was a fabulous weekend ... and I'm pretty sure Blendy will always remember how she celebrated her 21st birthday!

happy birthday, blendy!

I don't know how it's possible, but my baby sister is turning 21 today! In honor of this momentous occasion, I thought I'd post a brief retrospective of her life ...

The four siblings. I adored her then, and it shows how much I adore her now
that I'm willing to post this picture from my ugly duckling phase!

Elementary-age Blendy with our Grandpa Roth. 

High School Blendy (on Nations Day of Homecoming Week) with
her friend and fellow Bachelor fan Janae.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of us, taken
on our fabulous 2010 road trip adventure!

The three sisters earlier this month in Indiana.

Happy Birthday, Blendy! I love you!

almost thirty

A few things I'm thinking about the night before my big birthday (perhaps my thoughts should be more introspective, but this is me we're talking about, after all!):

• I'm several months late on this, but you should definitely check out Donald Miller's review of Love Wins. It's awesome! (The Stuff Christians Like post that led me to the review is pretty good, too.)
• Thomas Nelson (the company behind BookSneeze) is conducting a fiction survey, and if you complete it, you'll get a free ebook. You'll also be entered in a $10,000 sweepstakes. Go here to fill out the survey.
• While I often thought about it, I never got around to making a "30 Things Before I'm 30" list--so maybe I should do "35 Things Before I'm 35"?
• I wish my kitties would come home. They've only been missing for about two hours, so my fears are a bit premature ... but as far as I can tell, they'd never ventured out of the yard before tonight. (I know, it's been proven that cats wander all over the place, but I'm still nervous--they're little cats!) 
• Looking forward to Women of Faith in Omaha with my mom tomorrow night and Saturday. We splurged on a nicer hotel really close to the Qwest Center, and I can't wait to relax there after the evening session.
• Blue Skies Tomorrow is a fantastic book (seriously fantastic), and I can't stop thinking about it--I was even thinking about it during the sermon on Sunday. And at work. And I'm still thinking about it even though I've finished it. I'll review it later this month, so keep an eye out. If you like WWII era fiction, you'll love this one!

what a day!

I've always loved birthdays. When I was a kid, my birthday meant I didn't have to wash dishes, fold clothes, or do any other chores that my siblings had to do. I always hoped that the beans from our garden would need to be snapped--or better yet, picked--on my birthday, so that Andrew and Val would have to suffer through that while I stayed home and watched movies. Mean, yes, but I'm just being honest here! (And if you're wondering why I didn't mention Steph, it's because she never really had to do anything anyway . . .)

Today is my 28th birthday. Praise the Lord, this one was not difficult. Either 24 or 26 (I can't remember anymore!) was torture--I'm not sure why that one was so much harder than the others.

A look back at my day:

• 12:05 a.m. Say goodnight to Val, Jamie, Kimberly, and Steph. Yes, there was a slumber party at my house last night--Jamie was Val's college roommate, and she's on her way back to school. Kimberly, Jamie's friend from home, is driving back to school with her. Steph came over because, well, Jamie is her hero!
• 1:38 a.m. Finally put down my book and go to sleep. I was reading my latest book review blogger book for Thomas Nelson. This is the first book from them that I've been interested in to the point of not being able to put it down. I really wanted to finish it, but I had 100 pages left and knew I'd regret staying up so late.
• 6:55 a.m. Wake up to a Jeremy Camp song on the radio. Funny, because I often refer to My Bridge Radio as Jeremy Camp Radio due to the frequency with which they play his music.
• 8:00 a.m. Rush out of my apartment. I'm late for work on my birthday.
• 8:10 a.m. Buy Daylight Donuts to take in to work. I'm sure I'll be forgiven for being late if I come bearing donuts. Wish I could stop for coffee, but the line at the Coffee Bean is too long.
• 8:12 a.m. Eat a donut while waiting on a train and realize I could have stopped for coffee.
  
• 8:17 a.m. Walk into an empty office. Where is everyone this morning?
• 8:30 a.m. Receive a happy birthday text from Walter, my student from my church's ESL program.
• 8:35-9:10 a.m. My co-workers slowly trickle in. That's the nice thing about summer . . . it's really no big deal if we're not all in the office from 8-4.
  
• 9:03 a.m. Crack open a Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. I'm gonna need the caffeine today!
  
• 9:25 a.m. My boss (jokingly) asks if I'd like to use Rosetta Stone to learn Vietnamese, as we have a family coming in next week to drop off their child, and they don't speak any English. I just laugh at him.
• 9:30 a.m. Receive this email message from FutureMe.org:
  
  Dear FutureMe,
  
  Try to be more organized in yearbook this year. Use en dash and em dash. Set early deadlines because things won't get done when you hope. Require senior pictures in October and set the sr pages for 2nd deadline. I'm sure there are more things to think about, but I can't remember them right now.
  
  Oh, and HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!
  
  (Can you tell I wrote this when I was frantically trying to finish up the yearbook?)
  
• 9:44 a.m. My mom calls to wish me a happy birthday and ask what kind of coffee I'd like. Yay, coffee!
• 11:15 a.m. Steph asks Dad if we can go out for lunch for my birthday since we went out for Andrew's birthday earlier this week.
• 11:45 a.m. Meet Mom and Dad for lunch at DQ.
• 12:30 p.m. Birthday picture time!
• 1:08 p.m. As I struggle to keep my eyes open, I think once again that I'm too old to be staying up so late. Too bad I don't have those thoughts when I'm actually doing the staying up!
• 4:05 p.m. Take advantage of Amazon's sales to buy Christmas presents.
• 4:20 p.m. Pick up my bookagain.
• 5:15 p.m. Finish book. This is one review I'm looking forward to writing!
• 5:40 p.m. Head over to the parents' for my birthday supper. We had chicken tetrazzini (aka "Take One Fat Hen"), garlic bread, corn, coffee, and homemade ice cream. Muy delicioso!
• 7:30 p.m. Watch 17 Again, one of my birthday gifts, with Mom. She thought the best friend character was hilarious!
• 9:30 p.m. Go home; work on the Advance for a bit. (If you actually click through to see the Advance, you'll find that the person who is in charge of updating the website--me--never posted the most recent issue. Oops.)
  
• 10:15 p.m. Finish blogging.
  
• 10:30 p.m. Crash. I must be getting old!

(Not only do I love birthdays, but I evidently love writing about birthdays, as last year I basically told the same story I told today.)

thoughts on my birthday

I love my birthday. I always have, and I probably always will. I don't care that it means I'm another year older (although, can I really be 27? Is that possible???) . . . I just love the day. Since I have a summer birthday, I never had to spend it in school (which I think would really stink). And in my house, birthday kids never had to do any work--so I always hoped that Dad would decide beans needed to be picked, cans needed to be crushed (my most hated chore ever), or we'd have particularly nasty dishes that day. Selfish and spiteful, I know, but I always loved it when my siblings had to do those chores but I got out of them because it was "my" day.

Admittedly, my birthday is not quite as much fun now that I have to spend it working. But it's still great. From my coworkers wishing me a happy birthday to my sister bringing me coffee and a rose (from my mom) to a birthday email from Melissa in my inbox, it's been as good a birthday as it could be, considering I'm at work!