Friday Question #128

By , August 27, 2010 4:55 am

How did you celebrate your 21st birthday? If you aren’t 21 yet, how do you plan to celebrate?

My sister Christina turned 21 on Wednesday, and is having a party this weekend in Guttenberg, IA (on the Mississippi River) with family and friends. Look at the cute invites she sent:

I think the plan is to take her inaugural drink at the seedy bar Wack’s in Glen Haven, WI, as well as hang out at the beach and enjoy some other alcoholic beverages, now that she’s legal.* Ha. It should be a fun weekend (unfortunately, due to a family emergency, I can no longer attend, but I will be there in spirit)!

I also spent my 21st birthday weekend in Guttenberg, IA. Just like I did this year, and almost every year in between (except for the year I was in Rome for my birthday).

2005 was the year that RAGBRAI ended in Guttenberg, so we spent some time watching the bicyclists come in the day before my birthday.

RAGBRAI goes across Iowa, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River. So the bicyclists dip their back wheel in the Missouri when they start, and their front wheel in the Mississippi when they end. Cool, huh?!

Erin, don’t forget, you told me we would do a leg of RAGBRAI this year with me. We better start thinking of our team name…

“Team Megasuarus” (“Mega-Sore-Ass”)

The rest of my 21st birthday was spent hanging out with family, doing the beach thing, and the eating thing. It wasn’t a big “drinking” weekend for me. I think my aunt tried to get me to drink some weird concoction she made, but I took one sip then poured it down the drain later.

Notice how no one is watching me blow out my candles? Nice.

My nephew was so small then!

My dad’s parents came, as well as my cousins from Wisconsin. It’s so fun to get all of the family together there!

*I talked to Christina yesterday and she had quite the day on Wednesday… so she thought she would pass on alcohol this weekend.

28 Responses to “Friday Question #128”

  1. Jen says:

    I hope everything is ok with your family emergency! Have a good weekend!

  2. Shannon says:

    I hope everything turns out okay for your family. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to the party.

    I have no recollection of my 21st birthday! Isn’t that sad?! It was 11 years ago though. Boy, am I getting old!

  3. Erin says:

    Hope everything is going okay…!

    I had such a tame 21st. Dinner and champagne with my family. My sister turned 21 earlier this month and went ALL out for like a week… actually, she’s still going out every night now. 😉

  4. Kandi says:

    Your family is in my thoughts!

    My 21st birthday was rather uneventful. It was summertime and two college friends happened to be in town so we went to a college bar… and I didn’t even get carded! And there was a guy in there drinking a beer that I knew was younger than me. After one drink we headed home and made a couple frozen mixed drinks and watched movies.

  5. I hope everything is ok with the family emergency. If there is anything you need or anything I can do, please let me know!

    Happy birthday to your sister!

    My 21st birthday was kind of boring. I had to work early the next morning and I am not a huge drinker anyway so I think we just went and listened to some band that was not very good and then went home and I was asleep by 10.

  6. Sorry about the family emergency, but I do hope your sister has a great birthday!

    From how I recall it, my 21st was a 4-day affair. I was one of the youngest in my group of friends, so everyone came out- we went out the midnight I turned 21, the night of my birthday went to dinner with the ‘rents and then out, casino with a highschool friend and my bf the next, and the big 21st celebration with 21 shots that weekend.

    I have no idea how I survived.

  7. BostonRunner says:

    Happy birthday to your sister! I was one of the first of my friends to turn 21, so I went out into Boston with my sister, her now husband, my boyfriend, and a couple friends. It was the best night ever.

  8. Madison says:

    Oh man… my 21st birthday was a blur… eek. My parents took 7 friends and myself out to a nice dinner. Afterwards, we headed to the local strip of bars where I took the standard 21st birthday shots. Never again!

  9. Susan says:

    I hope everything is okay with your family!

    I was in Rome for my 21st birthday since I studied abroad that summer, so obviously no one there cared that it was TWENTY ONE. I also didn’t drink much before I turned 21, so I had a few drinks but nothing too crazy.

  10. RunningLaur says:

    Hope everything works out with the family stuff!

    My 21st had a whole bunch of friends come into my hometown (over the summer) and we went to 2 local bars. We spent the whole night trying to avoid people from my high school who were not our favorite people, and it only managed to work a bit, ha!

  11. Christina says:

    I was in college and my housemates threw me a quasi surprise party. I think it was the middle of the week and so after wards we went to Fridays to celebrate with “real” booze

  12. Jamie says:

    Hope everything is okay with the family.

    I was in college and my dad flew in to celebrate with me and about 25 other college students. We went to Dick’s Last Resort and then bar hopped at all the DePaul stops 🙂

  13. Erin says:

    I was the oldest of all my college friends so when I turned 21 none of them could drink with me and I didn’t want to drink alone. We weren’t huge partiers anyway so I think we went to TGI Friday’s for dinner? I don’t really remember what we did after that. Not because I was drunk, just because it wasn’t all that memorable.

  14. Kim says:

    Hope all is OK with your family…

    Unfortunately, my 21st birthday was kind of sad. I was in kind of deep with my eating disorder. In fact, just a few months after my 21st birthday, I went to an inpatient treatment center. I’d say I made up for lost time in the following years though… haha.

  15. Well my 21st was an awfully long time ago. Whether the fact that I don’t remember anything about it is due to the shear number of years that have passed since, or the shear amount of alcohol consumed, I cannot say. Mind you, in England, turning 21 isn’t really *that* celebrated. The legal drinking age in England is 18 and that’s the biggie.

  16. Leah says:

    I hope everythings ok!

    My 21st birthday was nothing special because our legal age is 19. That was a disaster. My friends had to take me home at 10pm because I was such a mess.

  17. I’m not 21 for another 2 years but right now I’m hoping to go to Vegas to celebrate.. even though I’m already of legal drinking age here in Canada. Not sure if those will still be my plans by then but you never know. I’m sure my plans will change by then but I have no other ideas at the moment.

  18. Holly says:

    I hope everything is okay with your family!

    Gosh…21. Do I even remember 21? Do I even remember 2 months ago? 🙂 My 21st was, unfortunately, a little anticlimactic! It’s in June, and I was in my college town (realllly small), and it was on a Monday. I think I tried to make up for it for the next couple of weekends, though!

  19. Kristie says:

    My 21st birthday was pretty low key… Chris took me to a tapas restaurant where I got a flight of wine (classy, I know), and then my housemates tried to throw me a surprise party. Tried, because Chris was supposed to take me straight to my apartment after dinner for the party and I did not want to go. I kept telling him I just wanted to go to his place and play Rock Band while he was at practice, until finally he had to tell me that I needed to go back to my apartment because my housemates had something planned. 🙂

  20. Etta says:

    My 21st birthday was on a Monday, so there was no going out the night before for a drink the moment I turned 21.

    My now-husband took me to a casino for my birthday, where I played nickel slots. Good times, right? Oh, and my birthday drink? A bahama mama. Quite tropical.

  21. bobbi says:

    hope your emergency turns out ok!

    my 21st was a mess. lots of drinking in Winona, MN where I was going to college. I got dragged from bar to bar getting my free drink in each until I got into a HUGE fight with my now ex-husband (because he wasn’t 21 yet, hehe!) and the rest is a blur. headache for days. damn, now I feel old. that was so so long ago….

  22. Adam says:

    Hope all is well with the fam. Those are never EVER fun.

    I can’t remember if we spoke about it – ragbrai came through my home town THIS year! I would have loved SOOOO much to go back for it but I wasn’t able to. Let me know what year you are thinking of doing it.

    For my 21st birthday, I was on an internship with almost no friends….so my mom flew in and we went to casinos. 🙂

    • kilax says:

      It would have been so cool for you to go home this year and see RAGBRAI!!! I would LOVE to do it next year. All I have is that mountain bike though. And I would probably only do one day. Do you want to do it someday?

  23. onelittletrigirl says:

    If I told you about my 21st, you wouldn’t believe me! Plus that kind of info should never be made public! 😉

  24. teamarcia says:

    Sorry about the family emergency–hope all is ok!

    My 21st was pretty low-key. I worked at a hot dog place that was open until 12:30pm. So we got out of there at 1am and went to this bar/club where I had a Perrier or something of that nature as I was and still am not much of a drinker.

  25. Danielle Turner :) says:

    what old pictures! wow! they are so cute! i hope you guys had fun at the cabin!

  26. martymankins says:

    Oh my… 21st birthday. It was very uneventful for me. Nothing major happened. For me, it was something that if I could go back in time, I would celebrate it with more flair and excitement.

  27. Aimee says:

    I had an amazing 21st with friends at a drag club. Long story. You can read it on my blog if you’re interested.
    http://aimeemarie.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/friday-question-128-1-for-me/

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