A 30th Birthday Celebration!

Aaron turned the big 3-0 last Friday!!  I tried to make this otherwise depressing milestone, a fun and exciting day for him.  He came down for breakfast to find a picture of him from each year of his life thus far, posted on the fridge.  I found the pictures on a cd his mom had given us a few years ago for Christmas.  It has tons of pictures of him and his siblings and is neatly organized by year.  What a great gift, huh!  It made this little project a breeze and I had so much fun looking through them!  There are some real gems on it.

At his request, a better than sex cake was made – recipe here.  I forgot to buy candles so he only got to blow out eleven.

As an afterthought, I should have only put on 10 and then made him blow them out 3 times!

To go along with the astronomy book I gave him, I scheduled a night at the observatory – just the two of us (oh and the worker, Craig).  We left Jayna baby with some friends and headed out after dinner and dessert.

While Craig and Aaron talked stars (Aar really knows his stuff!) and I listened, we looked at Saturn, Mars, and the Ring Nebula.  Saturn was by far my favorite.  And Craig offered to hook our camera up to the telescope and took these cool shots for us:

Although I wish we could have captured what Saturn looked like when we saw it through the telescope (much sharper than that image), the memory will stick with me forever.  It was an awe inspiring moment and quite a different experience than looking at it in a book or online.  I don’t really know how to explain it, other than it was just really awesome!