Over the Hill

I can remember my mom's surprise 40th birthday party my dad threw her....complete with a "new" car and "Over the Hill" everything. The house was full of all our family friends and I felt like my mom was the oldest lady around (no offense mom!).
But that's before I was 40....with a 2 year old! Now I realize how young 40 really is. I knew I wouldn't have any big parties because my/our friendships here are so much different than back home. But I also knew I wasn't going to have a hard time with this birthday like I did last year. Last October Rob told me we could go anywhere I wanted and I spent most of the weekend crying over it being my last year in my 30's. This year I had a different attitude and we enjoyed a family weekend together. Although we crammed a lot of fun things into the weekend, my 2 favorite things were watching my boys at the zoo and going to the Bass Pro Pyramid. The "Pyramid" was quite by accident because we passed it when we were going over the bridge to Arkansas (I wanted to mark off another state that the boys and I had been to even though we didn't even get out of the car). The store was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G and I highly recommend taking a trip to Memphis (even if you live in Europe) just to go to the store. It's the 6th tallest pyramid in the WORLD and Rob paid for the boys and I to go to the top so we could take in the world. OK, maybe just Memphis and Arkansas but it felt like the world. In hindsight I would've changed some of our weekend around so we could've spent several hours there. It was that cool.
I also loved the zoo. Although I'm not a big fan of enclosing wild animals in small habitats, I am a big fan of watching my boys' excitement when seeing the animals. Hands down, the funniest and scariest moment of the entire weekend, is when a mountain lion jumped up out of nowhere and came face to face with E. Thankfully the plexiglass proved solid and the lady behind me didn't have a stroke (although she claimed to pull a back muscle when she jumped and screamed). The entire family's favorite animals were the monkeys. We could've watched them all day, swinging and playing.
While it wasn't a fancy "Over the Hill" birthday, it was a special one. Although it didn't last a week or two like birthdays in the past it lasted long enough for me to feel loved. Turning 40 made me realize that it's not so bad being an old fart and most days I don't feel a day over 39. :)