FREAKING 30

Nobody really know's my age... it's a strange thing.... I do know I look a little younger than I am and I assuming at my age people would have assumed I could use birth control correctly (I am that one percent that it didn't work for). I'm not really hiding it or anything like that it though. When people do ask I always ask them how old they think I am and their respose is usually 21 or 22... even my boss the other day thought I was 22, which I then had to remind him I had been working at the company for six and a half years.... So, here is my secret, which I don't actually keep a secret but I am 29 years old. Which, I'm totally cool with, it has been a great year so far.... I am totally cool with it until I remember that on my next birthday I am turning THIRTY FREAKING YEARS OLD. I totally remember being 18 years old in high school thinking how thirty was sooooo old. When talking about if someone is super old or super young my mom has always said, "It all depends on what side of the fence you are on." I also assumed that by the time I turned thirty I would have my life figured out, (maybe I watched 13 going on 30 too many times), I had life panned out how I wanted it... two kids, one smoking hot husband with an amazing job who loved me beyond words, my college diploma and the perfect house complete with the white picket fence. Ya know The American Dream.

I heard a lyrics from a song once that said, "If you want to make God laugh then all you have to do is tell him your plans." At this point I am sure the higher powers are having a good chuckle concerning me and my plans. I was talking to one of my best friends from high school, Shayla, who will turn 30 a little over a month after me and we were discussing how weird that is. I told her she had nothing to stress about.... she has four beautiful kids and an amazing husband while I on the other hand have a bunch of failures and things that I almost have done. I was giving myself a little pity party when she told me how cool it was that I will have had so many experiences under my belt by the time the big thirty rolls around.

I sat and thought about her comment for a long time when a quote by the late Margorie Pay Hinkley sprang into my head, "I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping weed someone's garden. I want to be there with the children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."

Now please don't misinterpret that quote to me comparing myself to the late prophet of the LDS church's wife but I loved the meaning of her words. I have lived.... When I leave this world whether it be tomorrow or seventy years from now I will be one heck of a journey I took. I'm not making it to thirty the easiest way but I am making it the way I am supposed to. Life is really more about the journey than it is about the destination. Some of the decisions that got to me where I am were choices others made and a majority were choices that I made myself paving to where I am now. If I maybe did one thing different I might not be the mom to my Boston. 

Maybe some people aren't meant for the two kids, perfect husband and house and college degree. Maybe some are but it just takes them longer to get there because they end up detouring on little roads to see what is out there instead of just staying on the path. Regardless, my 20's will be ending in a half a year and 30 will be knocking on my door. Instead of focusing on the things I wanted that haven't happened I am planning on celebrating the experiences I have under my belt, which their are a plethora of them, and finally realizing that I wouldn't trade any of them for anything..... Plus, off topic, I actually really want to rent out a taco bus for that birthday that helps make that big number something else to anticipate. I will have made it to a number. I took some crazy turns... some things were terrible and some one were great. Some things were crazy and some were right on track. And hey, isn't that a big reason to celebrate?

XO:
Ashlynn 

Obviously it makes sense to share one of my worst 18 year old pictures, the one from my drivers license, and one of my close to thirty ones.... I think I kept the eyeliner companies in business.