The Younger Years

Happy freaking early birthday to me :)

My birthday is this coming Sunday so I found it appropriate with it being "Throwback Thursday" and all to go back and reminisce about some of my top birthday memories. First all let me tell you about the birthday hat. This hat is a tradition in our family that my mom decided everyone had to suffer through on their birthday. Even though my mom has passed away I will make sure I am in charge of the hat and carry on the tradition of embarrassing my family.

Even my grandfather must wear it :)

Let's start with the earliest memory - I am sure I could find a picture of this moment somewhere in some of my mom's many photo albums but that is a lot of work. The first birthday I remember I was probably about 4 or 5 and this was around the time period when I was obsessed with Barney. I mean who didn't love a talking purple dinosaur? We were at our beach house in Atlantic Beach and I am pretty sure I was holding a Barney doll in my hand when I was opening a present and low and behold it was another Barney doll and I screamed and yelled for excitement...even jumped up on the glass table I was sitting at. That, my friends, is how I know I was a little freakishly obsessed with Barney.

I also spent many of my 9,10 and 11 year old birthdays at Chuck. E. Cheese's. I loved the games and the singing fake animals - I remember I used to sneak up on stage with them while no employee was looking and try and mess them the big plastic animals.

Now let's get to the fun years - my 21st birthday was by far the most fun. During the day I lounged by the pool with some friends and had a permanent pool boy for the day, my fiance(now) Timothy. He was making all of us girls pina coladas, strawberry daiquiris and anything we wanted - I don't think I will be so lucky this year to have that service..see we had just started dating and he was the sweet boy who would drop anything to get me a drink, now it takes a little more puppy dog eyes. After a fun day at the pool we got ready, went out to eat Mexican and then came back and rang in my actual 21st birthday at 12AM. Timothy went swimming in our pond for a prize of two Kenny Chesney tickets. The next night I spent with my mom and sister - we went out to dinner and I of course had to suffer through wearing the birthday hat.

Beginning of the night

End of the night. Successful 21st.

My 22nd birthday was a little more low key - had a few people at my apartment on my actual birthday. But the night before celebrated and went out with my closest girlfriends and enjoyed a fun girls night out.

Made Caroline wear the birthday hat at this family dinner ;)

A low key dinner with my mom and sister

It seems that as I get older each year is less and less eventful. My 23rd birthday I spent most of the day laying on my couch with Timothy watching 24 on Netflix. That night we went to one of our favorite bars Pantana Bob's (that unfortunately closed down) with all of my good friends.

Here is to 24 and that this birthday is the best one yet!