It is almost impossible to believe but Emily turned 13 yesterday. There are some days that I'm totally good with that and love the young woman she's becoming. And then there are days when I look at her and still see this:
She will always be my baby but she's quickly becoming a grown-up baby. :)
Her birthday was stretched out over 3 days. It seems to be the way we schedule things around here, especially when birthdays land on a school day and we're all only together for a few hours in the evening.
Her birthday celebration started with a mother-daughter lunch at Olive Garden on Saturday at her request: her four best neighborhood friends and the moms.
The next day was her birthday present. She had requested only books for her birthday but really wanted to pick them out herself. So, we got her a hefty gift card to Barnes & Noble plus she had saved up Christmas and birthday money and gift cards so she had a lot of money to spend. She and I spent 2 hours there on Sunday and she came home with 20 books and money left in her wallet for another trip.
And then, finally, on her actual birthday, we had her cake. She wanted something to do with British rock bands and we found a Dairy Queen that would put a British flag on an ice cream cake. She put The Who on top and it was all good!
We're not exactly sure why they put the ellipses after The Who...?
But she didn't really care.
Her favorite part was the shopping but my favorite part was seeing her with her siblings when she was opening presents on Sunday morning. She really is like their second mother - she's an excellent babysitter, she helps them, she orders them around (haha!), and takes care of them whenever she needs to. And they ADORE her. As soon as she opened the presents from each of them, they couldn't contain themselves and both Andrew and Libby launched themselves on her. They just love her to pieces and were so happy to give her presents. You can see the love and adoration on their faces.
Happy Birthday, Emily!!!! We love you!!!
