49! Or, One More Year Until I Need to Change My Blog Sub-Header!

First, let me thank you for all the nice birthday wishes on Friday's post - between that and Facebook, I felt very spoiled!  Which was especially nice since our cell phone carrier (Sprint) went down on Friday, stayed down over the weekend, and I didn't get to actually talk to my kids or my parents. ::shakes fist at Sprint::

********************

I started my 49th birthday with a bang on Saturday by going for a long run - but the planned 4.5 miles turned into 4.9 after Julia made that suggestion in the comments of Friday's post.  Great idea, right?  More on that run in the WWU, but here's a picture of me holding Jeff's Garmin (I'd paused mine when we hit a long stoplight just after mile 4 and apparently didn't get it restarted - argh!):

 4.9 on my 49th - love it!

After hanging around for a while, visiting and snacking on watermelon, Jeff and I headed out to Blue Baker for our traditional "after the long run" breakfast - with a twist:

A cinnamon twist, that is!  What can I say - it was my birthday and it looked good.  I was nice and split it with Jeff, though.

By the way?  Watermelon, coffee, coconut water, an egg bagel sammie and half a cinnamon twist?  Bit much...I'm just sayin'.

The rest of the day was relaxing - we had a nice dinner out planned, so I hoped I could hold out and not really have lunch, but around 1:00 I was starving.  So we zipped out for a little lunch and a lot of iced tea, and then I opened my presents - yay!  Jeff gave me some cool packing cubes for travel (my mom and Sam have these and love them), and my parents gave me jewelry - a gorgeous necklace AND some beautiful aquamarine earrings!  Plus a nice check, which will be great mad money for when I go to California next month.

 

 Suitcase organization and nicely folded shirts, here I come!

Pretty earrings, pretty necklace - love them!

Oh, and this card that my parents sent just cracked me up:

(I wonder if it's easier to fix your mistakes in Wii Knitting?)

Jeff and I got dressed up and went out to a nice dinner - I was so excited to be able to finally wear these shoes, as I couldn't wear them at all last year because my ankle hurt with any kind of heel:

Along with the thrill of wearing the platform wedges came the additional fun of being tall...I swear, it's a totally different world, going from 5'1" to about 5'4"!

********************

You know, some people might feel apprehensive about getting so close to the age of 50, but not me.  I made some major life changes in my forties - not ready to go into details on one, but age 40 held a significant change, and then another at age 45, when I started my last diet.  It's been a pretty amazing decade, and I just want to put it out there that it's never too late to make some positive changes in your life.  Quite honestly, on my 40th birthday, I was not a happy person...about six months later, I took a chance on making a change, and while it wasn't easy, it was absolutely worth every tear, every bit of angst, all the money, and all the daily challenges...which later on made losing over 100 pounds not seem quite as difficult.  For my last year of this fabulous decade, I plan on enjoying the benefits of all the work I put into these major changes - taking the time to appreciate everything that I can do now, and having a blast along the way!