Epic 30th Birthday

I turned 30 yesterday.  Many months ago I told Sean that I wanted to do something "epic" for my 30th.  Kinda ironic that I said this because we're really not big into birthdays.  For us its just another day.  We dont buy birthday gifts and if we do they're usually pretty small or even gag gifts.  We make handmade cards.  But we do have cake.  Chocolate cake with 7 Minute Frosting is a MUST.  That's the only important thing for a birthday.  :)

So when I said I wanted to do something "epic" for my birthday that got the wheels rolling.  Sean suggested that I do something with girlfriends which made me think of going on a roommate cruise.  I called up 3 of my old roommates and said, do you want to go on a getaway cruise out of LA with me to celebrate our 30th?  Unfortunately it didn't work out for one of them but the other 2 were on board. 

These are my roommates from my Junior year at BYU.  We had SOOO much fun together.  Casey was my roommate since freshman year (we just hit it off so well), Liesel was my childhood friend who moved away and we reconnected when she came to BYU that year and Heidi was a random girl who lived below us freshman year who needed a new place to live so we thought, why not try it out?  We were the perfect dynamo.  We made silly music videos, we had LOTS of dance parties and spent hours sharing stories of awkward dates, boys we liked and everything else you experience in college.  

I really wanted the cruise to happen DURING my birthday but not everything can be perfect.  We left at the beginning of February.  Our getaway cruise spent a day at Catalina Island (which I had never been to), spent a day at sea and the last day was in Ensenada, Mexico.  This is our adventure....

Liesel and Heidi came from cold Utah and Montana so of course I had to take them to some good authentic Mexican.

They took every opportunity to soak up the warm California weather.

Getting on our boat was sort of a pain, it left from a different pier than it returned so we had to take a shuttle from the parking lot to our boat.

So excited to start our trip!

We had to wait in this long line to just check in.  It took us about 2 hours to get on to the boat.  Boo.

We took the obligatory muster drill in good stride.

Our comedian was racist and not funny.  Very disappointing.

We told them this was a birthday celebratory cruise so they obliged with balloons and a voucher for a treat.

This was my first time on Catalina.  There's a lot of stuff I wanted to do but was restricted because I was pregnant.  I'll have to go back later after the baby is born.

We rented beach cruisers to ride around Avalon.

We decided to go to the Botanical Gardens which was 2 miles up an slight inclined hill.  Not wanting to overdue myself, I ended up walking about half of it.

The Botanical Garden was small but a nice little escape.

The sun wasn't my friend but there is a deer in the trees.  It got pretty close to us.  I'm always surprised at how big they are.

On my to do list next time-take a tour of this historic building.

My friends obliged my museum attending desires.  This was actually a really well-done small museum about the cultural history of the island.  I also learned a bit of baseball trivia that Sean didnt know--the Cubs did Spring Training on the island which helped introduce baseball to the West.

We went to a show and it got crowded fast!  This was 20 minutes before the show even started!

One of the nights they had a 5 course meal.  It was . . . interesting.

We decided to play Jeopardy one night.  The questions were super duper hard.  We also did Karaoke one night which was . . . awkward!  They messed up our song and we didn't have the lyrics so we just danced around looking like drunk idiots.  Oh wait, we just fit in.

We went dancing on two of the nights.  We were so surprised to get into the night club to find that it was filled with geriatrics dancing to Pitbull and Lady Gaga. 

The beautiful port city of Ensenada Mexico.  I think I spent a grand total of 1 hour on land.

We asked an older gentleman to take our photo.  We told him his finger was covering the camera which he didn't believe us.

We took a photo with our old roommate Casey because she couldn't make it on our cruise.  We hung her picture in our room and thought of her often.  We wanted her to be a part of our cruise!  We missed you Casey! 

The one thing to do in Ensenada, the Cultural Center.  It used to be a Casino and Hotel in the Hollywood Days.  Now its has a small local history museum and banquet halls for receptions.

This museum had better English translations than famous museums in Europe.

We stopped to take some pictures with the locals.

Typical Ensenada street.

I used my huge vocabulary of Spanish to order Thrifty ice cream (special ice cream for those who know it). 

Liesel and Heidi wanted to get as much sun as possible so they went to a beach while I headed back to the ship.  A man asked if they wanted to ride horses and they said, why not?! 

Liesel bought some local wares for her kids in Montana.

Hard to see but there were a bunch of seals that kept swimming to this little embankment.  We figured they knew the ship would stir up food when we left.  They were very excited.

Blurry I know, but we decided to get mocktails on our last night. 

We spent some time chilling in our room reminiscing of the good ole days.

This was a great birthday celebration.  I did things on the cruise that I wouldn't have done with Sean (dancing, karaoke, acting silly again).  Even though it had been almost 10 years since we lived together it felt like we had just stepped back in time and were exactly the same.  As Liesel put it, we even have the exact same dance moves!  Thanks girls for creating a fun, epic memory for my 30th birthday!

My actual birthday ended up being fantastic too.  Sean happened to have the day off of work (how lucky that it happened to be my birthday).  We just spent the day together, sleeping in, eating lunch at a Japanese Restaurant, taking a stroll around a lake in a nearby neighborhood and of course eating cake and ice cream.  I loved just spending the day with my best friend!  Love you Sean!