Day 2 - Birthdays

I clearly do not remember all 27 of my birthdays, because who has room in their brain for all that. But here are some that I do remember:

4: OK, to say I remember this is a lie. But there's photographic evidence of it, and I remember the pictures. I know that my preschool class was invited as well as a couple of neighbor kids. We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. And that's where the memory ends.

6: I had my birthday party at the Burger King off exit 8 (this is how my 6-year-old mind described locations) because it had a play area. I don't remember most of the guests, but I do remember that the boy I was in ~luv~ with was there and this was the day I learned what it meant for someone in your own grade to be older than you. His birthday was in March and mine was in September so he was trying to explain that he was older than me and I was like "no you're not, we're both 6! we're the same age!" Once I got that all straightened out, my next question was "if Meghan is older than me, then why am I taller than her? She should be taller than me because she's older!" Ah, being 6.

7: My party was at El Torito! This was a Mexican restaurant that was also off exit 8, and closed a couple of years later to the dismay of Danburians everywhere. (Or, well, perhaps just in Danbury.) The main thing I remember about this was that my mom got a little hungry while baking my cupcakes and ended up with some food poisoning. Don't eat raw eggs, kids!

8: Hahahaha. Check this out... I got in trouble for talking back so my dad sent me to my room! At my own birthday party!!! And then when he finally let me out, everyone was chanting "Traci! Traci!" and I did not like that so I tried to run back up to my room lol.

13: This was the year I decided to have my first boy-girl party and then no boys came. I think this was also the year that one of my friends played a prank on me by dipping her napkin in some salsa, and then going into the bathroom and trying to show me that she got her period. I will be nice and not identify this individual. (This may have been at my 14th birthday, though.) This was also the year that Erin screamed every 5 seconds because she felt like it, and my parents were not happy. But most importantly, this was the year that I received a stereo for my birthday (with a CD PLAYER!!!) and my friend Rachel kept playing the Macarena song and rewinding it and playing it again like 15 times.

14: I think I tried to do a boy-girl party again but have the girls sleep over. Again, no boys came. Dang, I was a loser lol. The more I think about it, the more I think this was the year of the salsa prank. IDK. So it was late at night and I don't know if USA still does their "Up All Night" thing where they show an, um, adult film but of course it is highly edited. So a couple people wanted to watch South Park (this was the first year it was on!) and everyone else was trying to watch the ~bad~ movie and I was like YOU GUYS NO. MY PARENTS WILL KILL US. So finally I did probably the most uncool thing that 14-year-old Traci managed to do: I turned off the tv and told everyone that if we cannot decide what to watch, we are not going to watch anything. I think a lot of people thought I was lame after that. TOO BAD. It was still a fun party though.

19: A bunch of my college friends threw me a surprise party! I had never had one before, and I had absolutely no idea it was coming. It was in my friend's dorm room. My friend Matt planned it and what happened was, he had some pictures that my friend Angela had from some Campus Crusade event so we were looking at them while he took me to the campus food area and bought me a smoothie because smoothies were my favorite thing ever at that time. So then Angela was like hey come bring me my pictures. And I was like why can't she just come down here and get them, because she insisted that we had to go up to her room. And so we got there and of course everyone was in there and yelled "surprise". It was so much fun! Also there was a group of 6 of us that lived in my hall in our dorm, and we all went out for each other's birthdays - actually I guess my birthday started that tradition. So we all went to Bennigans and it was a great time. We even found a stray cat that we wanted to take, but of course you can't have pets in the dorms.

21: This was actually not very exciting. The actual day of my 21st birthday, I was in Jacksonville evacuating from a hurricane. I had Sangria!... flavored soda :( Yes, my 21st birthday meal was a burrito at the now defunct Southwest Burritos. But I celebrated when I got back. Dinner and drinks with one group of friends at Bennigans - my first legal beverage was a Malibu Breeze. And then dessert with another group at Fridays.

I do not actually remember anything about my 23rd or 24th birthdays. LOL.

25: IHOP and bowling. Just an amazing group of people and a lot of fun times. Despite having the least words, this was my favorite birthday ever.

I just had my 27th and I went to Splitsville w/some of my girl friends, and shared my birthday with Julie a few days later (hers is a few days after mine so she let me invite some friends to her party). So now to plan my 28th... :)