Birthday Tradition

On my 30th birthday, my co-worker Donna bought me a big ol' mylar "30" balloon.  When I got home that afternoon, I had Scott take my picture with the balloon.  I don't know why I did it, probably because I'm kind of a sucker for balloons and this one was a definite record of where I was on the big 3-0.

For the past two years, I've continued the tradition in a less conspicuous way.  Instead of balloons, I've used finger counting to mark the years.  On birthday 31, I was in Animal Kingdom, and it was cold!  On birthday 32, we were killing time in a mall in Tampa when we stumbled upon racks of prom dresses.  For 33, because 3 is my lucky number (how could it not be? my birthday is 3-3 after all!), I made myself a prop.

The best thing about this picture, besides my sign, is the fact that it was taken in the Magic Kingdom at 1 am today, and I was wearing pajama bottoms. (nope, I wasn't the only one!)  Scott and I went last night for the "One More Disney Day" promotion.  MK was open for the "bonus" Leap Day for 24 hours (for some reason from 6 am to 6 am instead of midnight to midnight).  We got there right after the fireworks, and the crowd was horrific.  We waited in lines for food, bathrooms...even the never-has-a-line TTA!  We were planning on staying until 2 or 3, but we gave up slightly after 1 when we looped back to Tomorrowland to see that lines had actually gotten longer than they were from 9-10!  We really did have a wonderful time - it's so much more pleasant to wait in lines when you're not also suffering from sunstroke - but the congestion was disheartening.  I'm glad we didn't stay and try to wait out the crowds.  I read a tweet from 4:30 am saying the line for Haunted Mansion was "only" 20 minutes.

Lesson learned: never underestimate the Disney die-hards!

I'll be bringing my sign with me wherever we go for the rest of the weekend (including on my actual birthday).  Hopefully it'll have some good stories to tell.