Tag: Rachel’s birthday

There is a Teenager in the House

Yes, my oldest, my first child, turned 13 yesterday. Shamus managed to get a post up here but I didn’t since I was busy with the birthday party she planned and organized herself. It is amazing to see this tall young lady (5′ 5″–she towers over me) where my little girl was so recently.

The cake that Rachel designed and made herself. (I made the icing and homemade blue dye for the pond.)

It doesn’t really feel like having a teenager since not only is she not really interested in “teenager” things but she, in general, doesn’t do the attitude. In fact we have been blessed to find her getting more kind, thoughtful, and loving as she has gotten older. We have seen her really blossom since she started babysitting (which she adores) and playing piano (which she loves so much that she babysits in exchange for lessons and goes with my mother-in-law to practice at her church while my mother-in-law works.)

13!!! And she managed to blow out all the candles in 1 go.

She is creative, a natural inventor/designer type who loves nothing more than taking impossible things and situations and making them work together. She has an invention in her head that she is working on figuring out how to make it really happen.

She had a sled riding party with friends of the family (worked out great- there was a friend for each of the kids.)

She is excited to be able to have an Etsy shop where she will be selling some of her creations and re-purposing things we have around the house to be sold as craft supplies (she has already photographed and figured out pricing on Altoid tins and plans to sell the beautiful cobalt blue jars the GNC enzymes come in, as well as other things). We haven’t had a chance to set it up yet because she needs a name for it and we have been busy. She dreams of owning a shop someday and wants to run cash register as her first “real” job after babysitting. This is a good thing because she is very good at convincing people to buy things.

Not eating snow, melting it with their breath.

And of course with recent events this post wouldn’t be complete without yet another total God thing. First off, that coconut milk came in handy yet again when I realized that it is pretty hard to make hot cocoa for a sled riding party without milk so coconut milk hot cocoa it was, which, I should add, is pretty good. Later I realized that I was almost completely out of coconut oil because I had used so much in making Rachel’s cake. Of course we have no money to buy more and I wondered what I should do because we are totally out of olive oil and have a tiny bit of butter in the house. Wouldn’t you know my mother-in-law brought a container of it over when she brought Rachel’s birthday present. Apparently the mention of God providing coconut and coconut milk reminder that I had left a container there for her to use in baking some time ago and she had no idea that we were almost completely out!

Finally I have another really awesome God thing to share, but that has to wait because Rach might read this and I want it to be a surprise.

Happy Birthday Rachel

Today my oldest baby turns 12.
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The time went faster than I could imagine when she was my chatty little thing who wanted all the attention, all the time.
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She is now a chatty big thing who wants all the attention all the time,
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but who also loves to give the perfect gift, be silly and creative, is determined to be herself regardless of what others think (and she REALLY doesn’t care what her peers or the world thinks about her or her style),
Rachel's birthday
who loves good books and movies, who totters on the edge between growing up and staying a little girl.
Rachel's birthday
She loves little girl (and boy) things still but not as much as she once did. There is a constant struggle within between the lure of grownup things and little girl things.
Rachel's birthday
We were going to take everyone to Chuck E. Cheese for her birthday– because she likes tradition and that is something we have done for a few years now but then migraine for Daddy meant that Daddy couldn’t go. Instead she chose to go out just with me to our favorite Chinese restaurant (where, unlike most places, she can easily eat) and then to T.J. Max to look at clothes, Claire’s Boutique to spend some birthday money on fake hair (she wore a pigtail that matched her hair but with purple shiny stuff running through to church this morning), then Michael’s for some watercolor paper. She had almost spent that money on a Fur Real kitty but after time and some thought went for the things she really wanted and enjoys.
Rachel's b-day cake
We are on the verge of adulthood here and the conflict within is a struggle for my childhood loving daughter. The cake she originally wanted was to be a cake decorated like the pond with a Cabbage Patch Kid ice skater on top. At the last minute she changed her mind to flowers and pink icing– a grown up cake, but she kept the sparkler candles instead of going for more sedate ones. It is interesting to see how she is developing, choosing deliberately each step of the way, when to go with her grown up urge and when to stick with her childlike one. At times we feel like we live with Katie Kaboom and yet the kabooms are getting less often as she settles into this new semi-grown up person she is becoming.