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A Very Happy Birthday

As my 35th birthday has been approaching, I have felt that it's a "big one". For me, I guess this has been true for 16, 18, 21, 25, 30 and now 35... Well, now that I think about it, maybe we celebrated pretty big at a few others along the way. Here was my 29th,


And really, of my close friends, who can forget my 30th????


Yup, that's me on a piano.


And then of course Rachel & I instantly became best friends as soon as we realized that we share the EXACT SAME birthday! 31 was pretty darn fun too because we threw ourselves a party!


The following year, SRCD (our big biennial child development conference) was held in Boston just in time for my 32nd, and Dana, along with a lot of other friends were in town!




And then just one year ago today we were all together again at SRCD in Denver! Tracy, Ariel, Kristin, me & Kathy celebrated by having dinner at a cuban restaurant. I was 9-1/2 weeks pregnant and sans sangria or mojito. It's so strange for me to think about that time because I didn't yet know that I was having twins!!


We also had an awesome get-together at Kelly & Scott's beautiful house!


So far THIS "big" birthday has been fantastic! I started getting birthday messages a day early, and I skype'd with Mom & Dave on Weds night. It's so great to be able to talk to them, as well as Dad & Mary, "in person"! Derek gave me lots of birthday hugs and kisses when he got up for work, so I went to bed with a birthday buzz already about me! I was serenaded on Thursday at 5:15am by Zoe dearest, who decided to sing mommy an early birthday song in honor of the big day :) She fell back asleep after singing, and then Silas kicked in with joyful shrieking at 6am, a half-hour earlier than normal. The babies were perfect angels once they were officially up and we had a very fun morning!

Eliza, one of my very sweet co-workers, brought me birthday flowers for the SECOND time in the 3 years we've worked together!


Then the entire lab, including Chuck, surprised me with a cake after the LCN meeting! It was so sweet and such a surprise because we don't really formally celebrate birthday's since our lab has gotten so darn big!


I got home from work, very excited to hang out with my "posse" (aka, the babies). Julia greeted me by singing happy birthday and she also brought me a cake!!!! She could only find an Easter cake, and it reminded me of a fun birthday party I had when I was 3 or 4 years old and we had a race by rolling plastic eggs with our noses for one of the games! Unfortunately I don't have digital pictures of that birthday celebration :( But here's one of the cake that Julia gave me!


Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, my posse cashed in early. Overall, however, they were fantastic company and I wouldn't trade this day for the world!!!



I can't wait for the birthday celebration to continue when we have dinner in the North End on Saturday night with Rachel & Keith!!!!

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