Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Golden


I first learned about "golden" birthdays when I celebrated my own. The day I turned 28, on July 28th, my girlfriends went all out like the party rock stars that they are, and they made a super big deal about it all being extra special because it was my golden birthday. They lavished me with thoughtful presents, took me out for dinner and Starbucks, and suggested that the next day I treat myself to a pedicure. I took them up on their suggestion and had the pedicurist paint my toes a sparkly shade of gold. It was awesome. For a celebration loving girl like me, celebrating my golden birthday made everything seem extra special. And now that I knew about these once in a lifetime gems called golden birthdays, I couldn't wait for my children to reach this milestone for themselves! And this year just happened to be Emma's year, as she turned 8 years old on July 8, 2012!

Some special things we did to make Em's special day golden included painting all of her nails gold, serving her her morning juice in a golden goblet, eating lunch at Golden Corral (completely her choice, as Boss refers to that place as 'the feeding trough', though it did fit our golden theme quite nicely), and visiting the Newport Aquarium to see the goldfish! We finished her celebration with our now traditional birthday balloon release. I really, really wanted gold balloons, but the lady at Kroger was fresh out, so we settled for deep purple ones (one of her current favorite colors), and we wrote our birthday wishes for Emma on them with sparkly gold markers. Fabulous!

We have always referred to Emma as our golden girl. She has the lightest hair color of anyone in our family, and when it is sun kissed, Boss tells her that she has beautiful golden strands. So it was a joy to celebrate the life of our golden girl on her golden birthday. It never gets old for me, this celebrating each and every moment of life thing. Life is such a gift, and when you get to watch it unfold through the life of your child? There is nothing better. Makes me feel like I am walking on golden sunshine, and yes, it feels good!