The Birth Month

I’m not altogether certain when a birth day morphed in to a birth month but my girl started celebrating three weeks ago and we still aren’t completely done with the festivities until this Friday. What I can promise you is this: if my birthday may be used as an example, at some point this phenomena reverses itself so one barely gets a birth hour instead of a birth day. But I’m not bitter. There’s nothing appealing to me at all about someone kissing me awake, baking cupcakes for me and 14 of my closest friends, taking me on a weekend retreat/shopping trip, and closing it down with a good ‘ole fashioned sleep over. The older I get, the more content I am with receiving random glitter text messages with a heartfelt song from a furry animal and a dinner of fine Mexican cuisine.

The joy of celebrations at this season of life is watching your kids being totally invested in all the things that define The Day. I offered to buy some adorable cupcakes from Walmart for the class party but Miss Thang insisted we should bake and decorate them ourselves. It really wasn’t that hard. Amazing how something so simple can make a little one feel so special.

(Side note:  The bandage on her eye is from her brother accidentally whacking her with a piece of pipe he found behind the church.  Want to know how we are certain it was an accident?  Because he left a mark.  If it were intentional he would have operated with much more stealth.)

In the birthday chair while the class sang to her. She doesn’t like all eyes on her at one time. She gets that from her daddy.

So happy the singing and glaring attention are over:

I taught a retreat this weekend in Pigeon Forge for my MIL and SIL’s churches as well as some other friends who came along for the fun. I took my little daughter with me because I wanted to have some girl time with her and I knew she would get petted to death. We went shopping in our down time and just look at this obnoxious journal she bought with her cash. My heart was undone:  First that she loves journals so much and second that there wasn’t one with an ‘L’ on front.

(Want to know the first thing she wrote in it? A “To Do” List which consisted of 1. Go to dumb school. 2. Eat dumb lunch 3. Get killed in dumb dodge ball in dumb P.E. I think she wrote this before she’d had her coffee.)

And now a moment of silence for my hair in this random photo taken by my camera stealing daughter.  IT IS ON FIRE. Where did this color come from because I know that wasn’t what it looked like on the box?  We’ll be working on that this week.

A small representation of the group from this weekend. I can’t even tell you how much I love retreat studies and having time to really connect with women you’d only get to see in passing otherwise. I got to spend time with some friends from high school and laugh my head off during a game of ‘Get to Know You’. Only confident women should participate or else our insecurities will rage when people guess your name from a clue such as “can’t water ski”. “What, you think I look like I wouldn’t be able to water ski? What makes you think that? Is it because you think I’m fat?” Y’all get the drill and you know how we are. But thankfully, only secure women played in our cabin. Right, girls?

Okay, so I really need to jump off the computer. This house won’t clean itself before the Sleepover Extravaganza of 2010 this Friday night. (On a totally different note, why do we bother cleaning house for 8 year olds? Is it because we are afraid they will tell their mothers we are slobs?  Should this be a Get to Know You fact?) Y’all wish me luck that we’ll make it until September 30th.

Because Boy Three’s 11th birthday is in October and we get to do it all over again.