Saying goodbye to my 20s

Today is my last day as a 29 year old. Tomorrow I start my 30s. Its been a great decade and I thought it would be fun to look back at how different each year of my 20s has been:

20: I turned 20 in the DPhiE house. I was a sophomore and Mark and I started dating the summer before then. I know my friends made me a cake out of yogurt because it was passover. It said "Kim is 20" in m&ms. We thought we were so old. Its so weird that I had known those girls for only a year or so and now we are still so close 10 years later! That was a fun year, I know I got a 4.0 that spring and I don't remember working particularly hard. Living in the house was the best. I don't think I have ever laughed as much or as hard as then. That summer was my last summer working at camp.

21: I was one of the first of my group of friends to turn 21. We spent the night at Cornerstone and I took 17 shots. If I did that now I would be dead. We had just gotten back from our cancun spring break. I was still living in the DPhiE house. Mark and I went to Europe that summer, then I moved into our apartment in the towers with Dayna and Gillian. That fall was kind of stressful with taking the GREs and applying to grad school.

22: I graduated college and thought it was the end of the world to be leaving my college friends. We saw eachother so much...making lots of trips to NYC and other plans. I worked at a preschool camp...the same place where Max now goes to daycare! I lived at home and started grad school at Towson. I babysat a few times a week. I did alot of studying and working but it was fun living at home because all of my friends from high school were also back in Baltimore. We kind of re-connected as a group and went out alot. Rachel and I were at Babalu every Friday and Saturday night. This was when Mark and I were having our on again off again year.

23: Mark and I were not "together" when I turned 23 but we got back together shortly after and everything was good. School was hard with preparing for "grand rounds" and working in my internships. Mark bought a condo that year and moved in with Jason.

24: I graduated from grad school and started working for Howard County Schools. I moved in with Mark and Jason in the fall and started putting the pressure on Mark to get engaged. It worked because we got engaged that winter. The rest of 24 was spent thinking about and planning my wedding.

25: We found out we were moving to Philly shortly after I turned 25. I was not happy about having to move a few months before our wedding but once we were there I loved it. Alissa and I were together all the time and having so much fun. I ended up getting a great position in Upper Merion which was a pretty hard job but it was the best paying job I have had so far. Our wedding that fall was everything I wanted. We went to alot of other weddings that year too.

26: The weddings continued this year and it felt like we got to see our friends all the time. We loved living in Philly and enjoyed all of the restaurants and everything. I had gotten to love the city and it was still easy to come into Baltimore for a night or a weekend. We started hearing about a position for Mark that might be opening up in Norfolk Virginia (I had never even heard of it) that spring and we had the big decision of whether Mark was going to take it or not. He did.

27: Mark moved to Virginia Beach to start his job while I was still wrapping everything up in Philly. That was not a very good time for us. He lived in an extended stay hotel haha until our apartment was ready. We saw eachother once every few weeks. I moved there shortly after school was over and spent the summer just hanging out and looking for jobs. I would go to the beach by myself. Honestly I don't remember much about that time but it wasn't horrible. I started working for a children's hospital that September and met the girls who I ended up being really good friends with. Once I met them I always had people to hang out with on the weekends. But our parents were there alot too and we were in Baltimore all the time for something or other. I got pregnant that fall so the rest of 27 was just thinking about becoming a mommy.

28: I was very pregnant when I turned 28 and through that summer. Max was born in August and the rest of that year revolved around him. I didn't go back to work and I spent my days breastfeeding, going to starbucks, going to target, and playing on myspace and facebook. Even though I was alone alot and Mark was working all the time, I had never been happier. We joined the JCC so I did playgroups and other things through that. I was in a book club and met other mommies who I would do lunch and playdates with. I still saw my friends from work alot too. I was able to come to Baltimore alot because the flight was so cheap so I did that at least once a month. I had actually started to feel like I had a life there but the fact that "we didn't know what we were going to do next" was always hanging over our heads and that was stressful.

29. I started this blog the week I turned 29! Max was getting bigger and starting to crawl. Living in an apartment was getting tough and it was getting harder and harder to live with all of the unknowns. We knew we didn't want to be in VA beach permanently but we didn't see a way out either. Then everything fell into place just in time. Mark got his job with the globetrotters and we found out we'd be moving back to Baltimore! We all moved in with my parents (did we really do this?) and spent the summer looking at houses and figuring out our life here. I got a job with the schools that I would start in the fall. We signed Max up for full time daycare. I started working in August and it was tough but we all got used to it quickly. We moved into our house around that time and everything seemed to be falling into place. Then I found out I was pregnant! (wow 29 was a big year!) So the rest of being 29 was spent chasing around a toddler and working full time and taking care of our house and preparing for yet another major life change.

And here we are. I'll be 30 years old tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed my auto-biography. I wonder if I will still be blogging at 40 and then I can go back through my 30s and tell you all what each year was like.