I love birthdays

As some of you know, I turned 27 on Sunday. Despite the fact that I'm pretty much done with all significant birthdays aside from the depressing milestones like 30 and 40, I still love my birthday.

Many of my contemporaries have ceased to care about birthdays. This makes no sense to me. As introverted as I am, I love my friends with a passion and find no greater joy in the one day of the year where I hear from seemingly all of them at once. I love the outpouring of well wishes that come in the form of emails, calls, texts, and Facebook wall posts (big emphasis on that last one, people blew up my wall like crazy this year and I LOVE EVERYONE SO MUCH FOR IT YOU MAKE MY COLD-HEARTED SELF FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY INSIDE).

More importantly, I love that my birthday brings the one day a year where I can actually motivate a large group of people to all assemble in the same place (if I could do this normally, my birthday wouldn't mean nearly as much to me). Everywhere I turn it's a new person I wish I spent more time with: High school friends! College friends! Sorority friends! (Who are also college friends, but whatevs) Friends by association that I also love spending time with but with whom I'm not close enough to spend time without incorporating that middle man/woman!

This brings me to the birthday celebration. I have been fortunate to be able to share my birthday party with my good friend and ex-Facebook wife Julie for the past 5 years, and between her friends and my friends (which obviously overlap quite a bit) we always get a fun (understatement!) group together.

This year, in the cab on the way to the bar, 45 minutes late to our own party as usual, someone asked me which of our birthday parties was my favorite. And so I've decided to rank them (FYI I have consulted with Julie and we agree on this ranking).

In last place by quite a long shot, still a fun night but the least fun by far, was double birthday party #3, our 25th birthday:


In 4th place, the very first party, our 23rd (I think this picture is totally adorable):


In 3rd, this year's party, our 27th (Julie looks super cute. I do not):


In second place is our 26th birthday (if you look closely you can spot my friend Anna, Crapface, and Nicole in the background):


While it's hard to top a mechanical bull and copious amounts of sweet tea vodka, the only thing that could possibly overtake it is our 24th birthday COSTUME PARTY. I like this picture because you can see that Julie and I decided to go in a cop/criminal couples costume, but Julie is clearly not wearing her own hat, my hat is on wrong, and of course, Lacey and Dave make an appearance! I should also mention that this is my favorite party despite the fact that it resulted in me vomiting for about 5 hours. So that's saying a lot.


So there you have it. 5 years of birthday parties and some of my favorite memories pretty much ever. And if you haven't ever experienced the wonder that is JULIE AND ARIELLE'S ANNUAL SUPERMEGAAWESOME BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA, get on it.

And of course, today is my wifer's actual birthday, so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIE!! Can't wait for the sixth annual!

Anyone else still have a huge, insane, unabashed love for their birthday?