Thirty-Freaking-Nine

Yep, I'm thirty freaking nine today.  Never thought I would be this age.  As a matter of fact, I never thought I would even reach thirty or that my children would grow up beyond maybe ten--not that we would all die young, but just that I could never picture it in my mind.  But nonetheless, here I am at 39 whether I like it or not.  But I'm not going down easy, with aging that is.  I plan on taking and appreciating all the good things that age has to offer, like wisdom, and freedom, and doing all I can do to fight the physical parts of aging (within reason).  Ever since my good friend Teresa told me that when she turned 50, she had the desire to mark it as a significant milestone in her life by running 50 miles, I knew that that was something I wanted to do when I turned 40; to mark it in some significant way.  I want it to be sort of a symbolic passage into a new stage of life, because for whatever reason, 40 is a BIG deal to me.  So having thought about this for months, this is what my 40th year will be marked with:

*An "Eagle" type project.  I want to do a large, time consuming project similar to what my son Christian did when he helped the women's shelter.  I am thinking I will do it through the organization TrueAfrica, because we have sponsored an African orphan attending school through this organization and they seem reputable.  I don't really know the logistics of everything I want to do, but I have a whole year to figure that out, right?

*Travel out of the country.  I have only really been out of the country for a half day when we took our Mexican cruise, and I really don't like to count that because I didn't really get to see or experience the culture.  We have never left the kids for longer than 6 days, but now that the kids are all getting older, I think traveling to another country for about 10 days would be possible.  We are thinking either Europe or Africa.  Hmmmm.  So hard to decide, but boy am I excited!

*Some sort of physically hard feat.  I can't decide whether I want it to be running or biking yet.  But I am thinking I will either do 3 half marathons or a Century ride (100 mile bike ride) and a couple of half marathons.  I would like to do a full marathon, but I just can't bring myself to commit to that yet.  We'll see.

I woke up to sweet and thoughtful letters that said things like, "You may not have a super power, but you are as pretty as a flower" (from Hunter), that I "am adored" (from Madison), that I "do lots of fun activities" from Elisabeth, that I "taught me (Christian) to think for myself, have responsibility, have a passion for something, and to be a person of character", and then of course Robert's homemade card filled with sweet everythings, and Ashton's adorable picture of me with a gigantic heart in my chest.  What more could I ever want or need?  Oh, and we are leaving for Park City for the rest of the weekend.  I love my life.

And here are a few pictures of the 3 youngest I took yesterday.