With a Family Like This Who Could Worry About Turning 30?

This weekend I was able to enjoy some time much needed time with my family.

My parents, sister and brother-in-law went out of their way to help me celebrate my 30th birthday (Sept. 2) and Nick's (Sept. 5) with a killer cake and a very special RURAL DARE.

Check out this cake! Seriously now....Nancy...she is some kind of awesome. The perfect DQ icecream cake...with the perfect black and pink skull motif.


I got a brand new 8GB iPod Nano. Also pink. Totally loving that also. Coffee, a skull coffee mug and a book also from Mom and Dad!

Greta and Nate got me loads of amazing gifts, to include an amazing scarf and necklace from Ireland. A cool bracelet! Candles, lotion, stationery, loads of great things. These people know me well.

Which LEADS me to the best birthday surprise! Greta and Nate really put a lot of thought into planning a special birthday surprise for me. And it was AWESOME. An Amazing Race-esque trip down memory lane, cleverly named RURAL DARE.

It was Nick, Finn and I against Mom and Dad, with Greta and Nate along as judges and referees!

There were 10 clues, all that involved some story or memory from my childhood. There were challenges and dares along the way. And at each challenge question, a photo was required to complete the mission.

It was hella fun. We were zipping around Viroqua, we could see Mom and Dad flying around in the truck. Finn was cracking up because we were driving bat shit crazy and running around laughing a lot.
Here are some good pictures of the action:
The Rural Dare Planners

First challenge! Successfully parallel park, at the site where I unfortunately failed my dricers license test, er...um twice. Good thing living in the city has paid off!

There was a "Becca through the ages" photo scramble at the American Family office - goal here was to put the photos in order by age. They put a couple of tricky "sensitive middle school age" photos together. The Sally Jesse Raphael glasses were the giveaway though.

Nick took the dare to do a shot of Irish Whiskey at the Viking Inn. Luckily for me, didn't mind it.

One of our last stops was the good ole' Liberty Store, a frequent haunt for my father, where there was a long list of beer names to unscramble. My love of beer helped me out on this one. I decided to drink one for inspiration as I solved the puzzle.

The final challenge was.....to balance a fake checkbook account. Greta knew ALL to well that this could possibly be one of the more difficult things in life for me. We were remembering all of the tears shed by myself as Reid and I would navigate the rough waters of basic banking at the kitchen table. Thank the Lord! Nick is down with the M-A-T-H....he lost out to Mom and Dad by mere minutes! The winners were generous to share their prize, a glorious bag chuck full of General Mills' goodness.

To top off such a fun event, the rest of the weekend was filled with delicious food, running, playing bean bags, watching Finn enjoy Erwin the Sprinkler and the Horse Show, complete with Tractor driving opportunities.

Here are a few more pics from the weekend.