I turned 30 on Halloween. Sometimes I’m still astonished that I’m old enough to drive and buy alcohol and eat as much dessert as I want, but then I think about being 30 and realize that teenagers would consider me old.

Teenagers are stupid. Get off my lawn.

My birthday was so enjoyable and reminded me how fortunate I am to have such wonderful people in my life. I don’t feel young or old or concerned about the number at all; I just feel pretty damn lucky to be where I am right now.

2014 Pumpkins
The result of a night of pumpkin carving with Dad, Andrew, Mike, bottles of Scotch and wine, and several pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Yo dawg, I heard you like pumpkins, so I carved a pumpkin into my pumpkin.
2014 Bayer Family 1
These are my parents. The family resemblance is undeniable.
2014 Birthday Cake
When my mother presented the cake, I was thrilled because (a) HOLY SHIT CAKE HELL YEAH and (b) she had the bakery ice a brilliant reference to the movie “13 going on 30”.
2014 Birthday Scotch
My father commemorates major milestones in my life with fancy alcohol. This sparked a conversation with Andrew this morning about whether or not to capitalize the word Scotch; I believe the answer is yes, but Andrew disagreed, looked it up online, and has been explaining his findings for a while now. I am not listening. He finally just stopped, looked up, and said, “You lost interest five minutes ago, didn’t you?”
2014 Bayer Family 5
I love my parents. They love my MacBook Photo Booth. When we got to the wacky filters, all hell broke loose.
2014 Pepper Palace Hat Lindsay Bayer
In celebration of my new team, my mother got me a Pepper Palace hat and rubber shot glass.
2014 Desserts
After lunch on my birthday, Andrew and I went to a dessert shop. Do you want to guess which plate is mine? I ordered all of the things, thinking “I’ll just take a few bites of each….” and then I even scraped Andrew’s plate clean.
2014 Bike Ride Lindsay Bayer
On a birthday bike ride with a stop at a house in Vienna that I thought was the one my family lived in when I was born. It wasn’t.
2014 Trick or Treat
Andrew and I dropped by our friend Bruce’s house to trick or treat. Bruce answered the door, offered us a tray of candy, ate a Starburst fed through his beak, and closed the door. He did not speak once. It was awesome and completely creepy.
2014 Bazins
We started the night with drinks and snacks before “borrowing” some firewood and heading into the woods to build a midnight campfire. It’s totally borrowing and not stealing because we returned it (in the form of smoke).
2014 Campfire Gordon
It’s too bad our campfire doesn’t do casual Fridays.
2014 Campfire Mom and Lindsay
Contrary to what our eyes might indicate, we’re mostly just drunk on Bugles and roasted marshmallows. My mother did, however, bring a half dozen airplane bottles of Jack Daniels that she’d refilled with Wild Turkey. My parents know how to live.
2014 Campfire Lindsay Bayer
And thus begins my thirties. The fun is only just beginning.