Birthday Cake Can ONLY Be German Chocolate

This post goes out in loving devotion to each and ever person that contributed to me having one of the most wicked 30th birthdays a person can possibly have. I'm going to get sentimental here before I start wise crackin', but you people blow me away...absolutely blow me away with your goodness. Here I was expecting to have a very low key birthday (considering I was new to the area and away from my close friends and family). Here I was thinking I could slip into my 4th decade with little notice.

I was wrong...dead wrong. This ended up being one of the best birthdays I've ever had, particularly due to all of those that either wrote, commented, called, visited and (to which I will now report) GAVE to the cause of my aging. Let us start with the party:

Caitlin and I threw a little Dance Dance Revolution competition party at our new pad. It started with dinner at the seedy Greek restaurant down the street called Cross Rhodes. The food = amazing. The portions were to size at the Mediterranean is to seas (aka humongous). Then we headed back for the competition. Here were the teams:

1. Scott & Ellen
2. Jeff & Caitlin
3. Matt & Alissa
4. Don & Liz
5. Kathy & Joe
6. Jim/James (I haven't decided which I will be calling him yet) & Kelly

Kathy & Joe started off. Kathy helped us find the apartment in which we are living. They are both awesome and of course were the first to volunteer to take on a game they have never tried. Joe was smoking with his moves.

I was really surprised to see everyone so willing to play all 4 rounds. We started with a practice round since everyone was new to the game. In the actual 3 rounds of competition, teams got points for how they placed in each round, style points, as well as extra points for increasing the difficulty of the steps. Head and armbands were passed out for the hardcore sweating that was to take place. While Caitlin and I smoked the crew (hey its my birthday!!!), J/J & Kelly (above) got second place.Scott & Ellen got 3rd. Scott was really intense and is bound to be a pro. Sometimes I swear he is Japanese and this was just another example of why I think that.
Food was clearly a part of the celebration as demonstrated here by JJ & Kelly. Caitlin made me one of the best German Chocolate Cakes of my life... and lets just say I was psyched about it.I successfully blew out the candles (no, there were not 30...but they were long candles. Extra long). The teams show off their prizes. Kathy & Joe got "bling" necklaces for shining in this new skill. JJ & Kelly got tootsies for their foot moves, Don & Liz got armor for charging ahead and having the most improvement, and Matt & Alissa got blow pops because technically they blew and got last place...but really, everyone rocked for the first time.

Now let's move on to the super nice gifts that I received and fully did not expect:

Tamara and Doug send me balloons all the way from LA. This was a totally rad shout out from across the USA. Yeah, you guys rule.
Don & Liz are a married, Mormon couple that are both doing the same program as me here at Northwestern, so obviously we are becoming friends. They won my heart by buying me soda...delicious, amazing soda.They even got me a Diet Mountain Dew for the weekdays and regular Mountain Dew for the weekends. I think they must have noticed that I had like 5 sodas in the first 2 days of class.
They also got us skeleton glasses to consumer our beverages with.
I got a Red Mango gift certificate from JJ & Kelly and a lovely card from Alissa & Matt. Other friends also sent super rad cards to me, including a Valentines Day card from Smashtastic and pretty much the most precious card from my peeps Aves Smith. LOVES AVES!
Caitlin bought us bikes for my birthday. You will soon see that we have already gotten some serious use out of them. This is all about going green...and green stands for saved gas money in this case. Both Judes/Lynn and Pam/Dave contributed to us getting these bikes. We love them.

My mom gave me some really nice gifts, including my great grandpa's copy of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith from his mission in 1924. It is wicked old and very awesome.

Finally - the best gift of all. This was the first gift I opened on my birthday morning. Caitlin figured I should start the day off with a gift so she grabbed a package sent from Stephen. Neither of us knew what was inside. When I saw what it was, I nearly lost my marbles. Stephen had given me a huge autograph book filled with autographs from horror movie stars. Many of the autographs were directed at my for my birthday. While there are some lesser known stars, he hit some really big ones as well. Below is a sample of some that he got.

Robert Goulet! While Beetle Juice is not the scariest movie ever, this autograph is amazing.Janet Leigh from Psycho - the shower scene!Johnny Depp! You may not know that one of Johnny's first movies was Nightmare on Elm Street. One of the best lines from that movie is his: "chastity sucks!" Also, he was in Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands. Corey Feldman. I was kind of obsessed with him from the movie Lost Boys (a vampire movie) as well as Goonies, obviously. The original Mike Myers from Halloween!! I love Halloween.

And this one was really special to me - John Carpenter. He directed Halloween and got the entire 80s slasher genre going, to which I am forever indebted. I love his style, and a personal autograph (plus this wicked photo) almost made me cry. You might think I'm joking...which must mean you don't know me very well.

Stephen - thanks. I still get giddy about this book and look at it almost daily. That was one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. Thank you for spending all those months working on this. And all that time I thought you were just surfing for porn when really you were getting me autographs!