An Ode to Me- It's my B-DAY!

So I've never really had a hard time celebrating myself as those of you who have spent a birthday with me in the last 10 years would know. I think it all goes back to my 16th bday when I was on a trip with my youth group and no one knew that it was my bday and I was a bit bummed that no one knew and then it came up anyway in a game and everyone felt silly for not knowing. So now I just let everyone know that it's coming and celebrate for weeks :-)

Today was the first bday that I've celebrated with either of my parents since I was 20 (and it's been since I was 18 with my mom), so that was awesome!! We pulled out all the stops with a special childhood meal- dad's marinated beef with mashed potatoes and then played trivial pursuit and looked at pictures from my childhood. John and I baked a shortcake for myself and we had loads of fresh fruit and whipping cream with it. That was awesome too.

Anyway, as you will have learned from the last blog entry- we have a bday shirt tradition so I'm going to post here some assorted pics from past years.
I'm 1

I'm 2

I'm 6

I'm 7

I'm 11

I'm 13

Bit of a gap since I haven't gotten the next bunch of pics from my folks...

and I'm 25

I'm 26 (technically this pic was just taken 2 months ago, but I thought it would be a cool pic :-) )

I'm 27 today!