Birthday Weekend

My sister's birthday was this past Wednesday.
She turned 40.
I was trying to explain to the boys why 40 was such a big deal and I may or may not have said something like "40 marks your life being half over".
That sounded super depressing and since people in our family typically live well past 80, I felt compelled to dig my way out of the horrible idea I planted in their head.
I probably failed.

What I was trying to say is that 40 is big and deserves a big celebration.  And that is just what my cousin and I did for my sister.  A super fabulous 40th to remember.  No big party.  In fact, we didn't have cake or any other type of dessert. But I promise it was awesome.

We planned a getaway in which my super-planner and slightly controlling sister didn't get to plan a thing.  Ha!
And we planned a getaway that was beautiful in so many different ways.

We experienced awesome natural beauty as we took a ferry ride across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, hiked to a waterfall, roamed through a city park, went to sleep each night and woke up each morning with a gorgeous view of the water and drove along the peninsula enjoying the beauty for hours.

We experienced the beauty of love and friendship as we talked and laughed the whole weekend away.  The three of us have never been away together, just us, so that in itself was really wonderful.

We ate some super delicious and beautiful food!  Really good food.

And finally, and perhaps most memorably we experienced the beauty of giving.

A few months ago I saw a post on someone's facebook page or link to a blog about a lady who did thirty-some random acts of kindness in honor of her thirty-something birthday.  My cousin and I decided that this is exactly what we needed to do!  We would spend the weekend helping my sister show love to 40 people through acts of kindness.  It really is the perfect endeavor for someone who's life is half over.  I mean for such a monumental birthday.

The kindness started at the airport where we had her give away her flowers, balloons, and luggage cart to strangers in the airport.  Throughout the next few days she gave homeless people food and a gift card, she paid the toll for the car behind her, gave a parking booth guy cookies, gave people money for laundry, paid a parking meter, gave a woman her umbrella in a hail storm, wrote notes of encouragement and left them on cars and in books, took pictures for strangers, spent a lot of time on the ferry helping a lady in and out of the bathroom (twice), and a whole bunch of other things.
When she got home from the trip she had 3 days to finish about a dozen more acts.  She made a cake for her bible study ladies, dropped off potted plants to neighbors, a goody basket for the interns at her church, coloring books and crayons at the hospital, and bought coffee for a stranger and left a huge tip for a barista at Starbucks.

Her list is tattered, rained on, and quite a mess, but with each check mark on the list of things to do, say, write and give, is at least one person touched by her.  I venture to say that none of us will forget any of the faces we saw last weekend as they were blessed by a random act.  The guy that really needed the luggage cart for all his bags at airport, the little girl's eyes when she saw the bouquet of balloons, the lady pushing her son in a wheel chair taking the flowers,  the lady who was astonished by our story of giving in honor of my sister's birthday and couldn't stop saying "God bless you".  The homeless man pushing his cart up the hill, the sleepy parking guy, the people who chased us down after the tollbooth. And it goes on and on.

Out of this project, not only were the three of us blessed by giving and the forty + people blessed by recieving, so many other people who have heard about our little adventure have vowed to do something similar in the future.  The gifts that keep giving.

Now, that is how you kick off 40!