photo 3Today is my mom’s birthday. I’ll go ahead and relieve the suspence now– I’m not throwing her a surprise party. I made that mistake one year before finding out she hates surprise parties. She does like the attention to her birthday, I think. Perhaps just not that much concentrated attention.

Some people would rather forget the anniversary of their birth entirely. Why? We’re all so excited for our birthdays when we’re young. What happens? Remember, it’s not easy to get old, but there are far too many who never got the gift you have been given — the gift of growing older. Happy Birthday, Mom.

photo 4And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ~Abraham Lincoln

There was a star danced, and under that I was born. ~William Shakespeare

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ~ Mark Twain

May you live all the days of your life. ~ Jonathan Swift

m2_2There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. ~George Santayana

Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative. ~ Maurice Chevalier

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. ~ Reverend Larry Lorenzoni

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty. ~ Georges Clemenceau

The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

photo 1Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. ~ French Proverb

At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgement. ~Benjamin Franklin

Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind. ~ Alexander Pope

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow. ~ Margaret Fuller