Chren’s 30 Before 30 List

Happy September everyone! September means the start of autumn soon and the start of birthday season for us. Our birthdays are only three weeks apart, meaning that we celebrate a lot of milestones together. Now that we’re only a few years away from the big 30, we came up with a list of things that we want to do together. We’ve seen a lot of 30 before 30 lists, but most of them have the same life goals and things to try. We wanted our list to be fun, unique and more about creating amazing memories than focusing too much on a timeline. Have you ever made a list like this? Let us know in the comments.

1. Travel to Another Country

We’ve both traveled before, but never together outside the east coast. We have so many places on our list, and we hope to plan an overseas trip within the next year. We haven’t settled on a place yet, but we’ve discussed Paris, Dublin and Dubai as possibilities.

2. Go to a Music Festival

The best part about having a best friend with similar taste in music as you: you can go to concerts together. We’re hoping to find a fun summer musical festival in the future. Sadly, we can’t get to Las Vegas for the When We We’re young festival and Warped Tour isn’t around any longer. However, we’re sure we can find a festival that we both enjoy in the next few years.

3. Road Trip to Cedar Point

Cedar Point is the creme de la creme of American amusement parks. We both love riding rollercoasters and the experience of visiting a new amusement park. There are plenty of rides at Cedar Point to keep us busy for a couple of days.

4. Try an Escape Room

Escape rooms look like a lot of fun and they’re great for team building. What better way to spend a day with your bestie than trying to solve a puzzle together.

5. Get Published

Becoming published writers is something we’ve both wanted for a long time. We’re ready to push ourselves to write more and focus more time and energy to getting published. We’re happy to share our writing and publishing stories on the blog.

6. Take a Dance Class

We love to dance and have spent years learning from the YouTube school of dance. Seriously, we’ve found YouTube videos on everything from Salsa to Swing. We’ve even come up with more than ten dance routines. However, it would be a lot of fun to learn from a professional.

7. Start Chren Media

Going into business together is something we’ve talked about for years. Starting a blog and writing together is the first step. We have much bigger plans though. Living together was another step in the right direction because know we have more time to dedicate to planning out the next few years. We have a lot of fun ideas for what we want Chren Media to be and can’t wait to share more details in the near future.

8. Zipline Over a Waterfall

There are two waterfalls not too far away where you can zipline over them: Niagara and Montmorency. We’ve thought about taking a road trip to Canada so we can zipline over a waterfall and do some other fun activities, like visiting a winery and trying poutine.

9. Come Up with an Original Recipe

Over the past week we’ve cooked together a few times and Christy loves to cook. But we’ve yet to come up with our own recipe. We don’t know if it’ll be an entree or a dessert. We just know we want something to be uniquely ours.

10. Finish Two Johan Books

We love writing The Misadventures of Johan O’Malley together. While we only have ten chapters on the blog right now, we already started thinking about book two, which follows Johan through his senior year of high school. We’d really appreciate more views, so if you haven’t read it yet, please check out Chapter 1: The Prom.

11. Get the Big Minion at Dave and Buster’s

Dave and Buster’s is one of our favorite places to hang out. Everything we win, we spend on stuffed animals. We think it would be fun to save up enough points to win the biggest stuffed minion they have.

12. Go on a Spontaneous Adventure

Obviously, we don’t know what we’d be doing. It would be a lot of fun though to just do something fun without planning it out. Whether we go on a long road trip or find something local, as spontaneous day of adventuring is the best way to shake things up.

13. Visit Jeff Kinney’s Bookstore

Reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books together is something we’ve done for years. We take turns reading the books out loud and even act it out. Jeff Kinney inspires us so we would love to visit An Unlikely Story and even be able to talk to him.

14. Celebrate Halloween

We’ve never had the chance to spend Halloween together, so we can’t wait to make the most out of this October. Celebrating Halloween together includes doing all our favorite activities, which includes attending a fall festival, visiting a haunted house, watching scary movies and finding the right costumes.

15. Plan a Writing Retreat

Even if it’s just the two of us and not part of a formal process, going someplace beautiful for a writing retreat would be a lot of fun. We would set aside a lot of time for writing and fill in the gaps with finding inspiration. For example, walking along the beach, talking with random people or even playing a game with no distraction. Just having a few days away from our normal lives can be extremely productive.

16. Go to a Red Sox Game

We are both big Red Sox fans but, somehow, have never attended a game together. Hopefully we can go one year when they’re playing well. We have plenty of options in the upcoming year, since the Red Sox will be playing the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles next season.

17. Try Axe Throwing

Axe throwing would be a fun and unique challenge. We can’t think of anything we’ve done similar to this. Friends of ours tried it and said they had a blast. Let’s see which one of us better at hitting the target.

18. Attend a Surfing Lesson

Both something fun to do and a cool challenge to take on. It would be a good way for us to work through a challenge together while having fun in the waves. We both love spending the at the beach and this will only make it more exciting.

19. Drive Through the Fort Pitt Tunnel at Night

Just like the famous scene in Perks of Being a Wallflower! We just don’t trust ourselves standing up in the back of a pickup truck so we will be sitting safely in the car.

20. Take a Sip and Paint Class

While our creativity is usually focused on writing, we wouldn’t find trying to paint together. There’s a lot of places close by in the area and we can even paint something seasonal to hang up in our new place.

21. Make a Chren Scrapbook

Nine of years of friendship has left us with many photos and countless adventures. Next year for 10 year Chrenanversary, it would be nice to print out all our amazing photos and make a scrapbook telling the story of Chren.

22. See Hamilton Live

Hamilton is one of our favorite musicals. We’ve seen it on Disney+, but we’ve heard nothing can compare to see it live. The music and the energy of the cast would make it an unforgettable experience.

23. Explore the DC Area

Since we both live here now it means it’s the perfect opportunity to explore new places together. We’ve been all over Boston on multiple occasions. Now we get a chance to move our adventures and Chren antics to DC.

24. Volunteer Together

Ben has done the Pan-Mass Challenge every year since 2010 and we think it would be fun to volunteer together with Christy either working at an aid station or just cheering along.

25. Drink at an Ice Bar

Ice bars look so cool. The entire bar is made out of ice and patrons bundle up to enjoy a cold drink in a glass made of ice. It just sounds like the perfect winter experience to have together.

26. Bury a Time Capsule

We’ve already made it to nine years of friendship. We’re certain we’ll be besties even at 50 years old. So before 30, we’re going to make a time capsule and dig it up right before we turn 50. Let’s see if we still find our antics funny.

27. Spend the 4th of July in Philidelphia

Not only is it an important city in the country’s history but it is supposed to have one of the best fireworks displays. It would be fun to make it a weekend getaway so we can explore Philly, eat a cheesesteak and celebrate the holiday together.

28. Attend a Book Festival

We’re both book nerds and love to read and discuss books together. Why not go to a festival where we can meet some of our favorite authors. There are plenty of book festivals around the country, so we just need to find one.

29. Get 10K Blog Views a Month

We’re aways off from 10k views a month. Still, we want to dream big. Now that we have more time together, we can spend more time with blog content. We’re even going over our September content today.

30. Plan a Joint 30th Birthday Party

Lastly, we want to celebrate entering our 30s together. The best way to do that is to have a fun party together with all our friends and family. We haven’t come up with the specifics yet, we just know the food will be yummy and the music perfect for dancing the night away.