It's my birthday! 24 has been a good year to me. We've spent all of my 24th year chugging along with Anthony's school and watching our kiddies grow and develop into little people, intermixed with little vacations and personal victories. You really can't ask for much more.

I've spent the day catching up on adult (aka boring) things since the kids and Anthony are out of town for the week. I've received lots of love-filled phone calls (thanks for those!) and splurged to buy a new pair of shoes and get my nails done. Just typing those words make me cringe with the need to justify those purchases: I had a great promo text for the shoes so they ended up being cheaper than WalMart shoes and when I say 'got my nails done' what I really mean is I bought some press-ons and did them myself. Ah, the little things.

Birthday pictures are kind of a big deal to me. They're a tradition carried on from when I was little. Come on, who DOESN'T have their picture taken on their birthday? However, I ran into a little roadblock this year: I am all alone! My little family is a state away, my parents are up at a family reunion, and I took the day off from work! I had the genius idea of taking pictures with my tripod and remote. How hard could it be?

HARD. How do you get the camera to focus on a person when you have to preset your settings then run into the frame? I tried setting props into the frame to mark where my face would be. I tried taking a photo, then manually adjusting the focus tiny bit by tiny bit, and eventually gave up after about 50 exposures. I had to bring the Myspace out in me and try to just hold the camera as far away from my body as I could.

They're not perfect, and I won't be attempting any more self-portraits for a loooong time, but here is me, at exactly a quarter of a century old.




Here's to being 25!