4/28/80-4/28/08

i had the best birthday ever. EVER! thanks for all the well wishing. and david, i know you meant to call me. no hard feelings. you're only my 3rd favorite brother now. my golden birthday did not let me down! 28 is great! of late i have been apprehensive about celebrating birthdays with bigger and bigger numbers associated with them. i fear the older you get the less fun your birthday is. SO NOT TRUE!

here's the breakdown:
6:30am- i woke up and remembered that my sister, heather, had spent the night! a great way to start a day.
7:00am- enjoyed reading the entire comics page of the newspaper by myself with no interruptions while the kids were still sleeping. ate a GIGANTIC bowl of reese's puffs cereal.
8:30am- ran three point one miles with my sister by my side.
10:00am- went to the grocery store stinking like a teenage boy because i was still wearing my workout clothes. purchased items for my dream birthday cake.
11:00am- created dream birthday cake. heather did most of the baking. i did a fair amount of bowl licking.
12:00pm- removed the abominable stink from my body by showering.
1:30pm- was picked up by thomas for a fun lunch downtown on the plaza! thomas surprised me by taking the afternoon off.
2:00pm- consumed delightfully creamy gnocchi pasta at the classic cup. it was so rich and delicious that i would swear they had added newborn baby skin to the sauce.
3:00pm- shopped. purchased fantastical silk dress from banana republic courtesy of mimi susu's gift card. thomas amused himself by checking the ESPN website on his blackberry. how did i ever convince him to go shopping with me before the invention of the blackberry?
5:00pm- returned home from plaza escapade.
5:30pm- put finishing frosting touches on dream birthday cake.
7:00pm- enjoyed a wonderful birthday party with my adoring spouse, my well-behaved and clean children, my magnanimous and loving parents. much pizza was consumed. crystal light was imbibed out of champagne flutes. cake and ice cream were devoured. presents were opened and much fun was had by all!
10:00pm- did the dishes with a huge smile on my face
11:00pm- crawled into my bed with a huge smile plastered on my face and thought about my wonderful day. can't wait 'till next year. of course i think by then i will be back to wanting to go backward in age. i would like to try and be 27 next year.

the classic cup!
me displaying my banana republic dress bag. (did you know that i love banana republic? those of us in the "know" call it BR. now you know.)
my "28 is GREAT" cake. more frosting than you can imagine. and on a classy platter of a cookie sheet covered in tin foil.
what makes this my dream cake you ask??? the bottom layer was a gi-freaking-normous brownie. on top was yellow cake and gobs and gobs of frosting in between layers. perfecto.
the band that played at my party. i love live music.
i never know what to do when people are singing happy birthday to me. what's the polite and gracious thing to do? smile demurely and make eye contact with each guest? sing along softly? stare at my hands in my lap? i chose none of these. i waved my arms around like a lunatic and sang louder than everyone else in a higher octave than everyone else. i think that the best way to celebrate.
ps- that's not a gigantic diaper around my waist, though it does resemble one. it's my faithful apron. i never enter the kitchen without it. i thought that if i wore it around my waist only then it wouldn't be so obvious in pictures. hmmm, guess i was wrong!

about the post title:
oftentimes i have wondered when the best time of the year is to die. you don't want to die near christmas because you can't open your presents and you don't want to die right before your birthday because you want to get the most out of the current age you are. and doesn't it make sense to come full circle and die on your birthday? so i figured that coolest day for me to die would have been monday so that my headstone would have read:
4/28/80-4/28/08
how cool would that have been? now i have to wait until 4/28/28. or 04/28/40. that would be pretty neat too. or of course, the granddaddy of them all, 4/28/2080. is this morbid? just a little. but you gotta plan for these things.

let's talk about me

i can't remember the last time i left a hair salon completely happy. several years would be the closest estimate that i could give. i think it was that time in 2002 that natalie and i got our hair done at the real von curtis salon, not the school, in provo. so, it's been awhile. some of you may remember the infamous perm hair of 1993 and 2000(gasp, i know, i had a perm that recently. how many of you can claim that?). many of you recall me with black hair, or stripey gold hair, or stripey platinum hair. and LOTS of bad regrowth. plus lots of shades of brown hair and of late, gray hair. yikes! somehow, last week, the unimaginable happened. the stars aligned with the moon and i left the salon with a smile on my face and a spring in my step! i ventured out to a new salon called blondies and they accepted me, even though i am a brunettie. i would guess most of the stylists there are brunetties too.

anywhooo, this new cut isn't anything outrageous. i'm not JEM or anything.

JEM or not, i think it is great. i just sat down and told the stylist i wanted something youthful and non-mommyish and easy to do yet slightly dramatic. and as an added bonus if it could be a little bit like victoria beckham's hair when it was long, that would be fantastic. (victoria is my current crush. now if only katie holmes would go away so that we could be best friends...)
TA DA!
the day of:

those of you that have followed my hairstyles of late are probably remarking to yourselves, "heidi, that i just like that time you wanted your hair long with loose waves. only you used a hillary duff photo." i know, i just like that look. straight, flat hair isn't for me. the bigger the better!

my personal recreation of the style:

furthermore, judging from these photos, i like to wear aprons all the time.

thomas seems to like it too. but he has told me to stop staring at myself in the mirror and fluffing my hair all day. i say, i'll fluff all i want! it means i actually like it! would he rather have the usual grumpy, whiny, complaining depressed heidi? well, about my hair anyway? haircuts can't fix everything!

heidi's haircuttin' haven

doesn't it seem like the hair salon with the goofiest name is the hair salon that should be most avoided? too bad reagan doesn't have that option. there is no chez heidi salon in this bathroom. but thanks to fantastic enrichment night lesson, i do have the skills to do a VERY basic boys haircut. reagan had begun to resemble shaggy from scooby do and i was feeling like i needed to drive the mystery machine around town and pass out scooby snacks. so a haircut was in order. zoinks!

shaggy, the uncompliant client

the back view. luckily, reagan doesn't have normal hair, he has cat fur. thin, fuzzy and completely unmanageable.

the bribe. i told reagan he could eat as many cookies as he wanted if i could just cut his hair.

the big reveal: a full tummy, a bit itchy...

and pants-free, of course,

but happy.