December Birthday Girl



18 years old!

Poor Emily. Her birthday is on December 29, right smack dab in the middle of all the holiday celebrations. School's out, friends are away. Even family is tired of food and partying. And there is that annoying tendency to give one supposedly "big" gift instead of separate Christmas and birthday gifts.

Steve and I have always made a point of having a separate gift for each occasion, as well as a birthday cake on the special day. We typically have her "friends" party in the new year.

This year, however, she got a pleasant surprise: a quintuple birthday!

Party number one: her girlfriends invited her over for an informal party, complete with a homemade cake.

Party number two: she went out for pizza with two more girlfriends. (No cake on this occasion.)

Party number three: her boyfriend showed up with a homemade cake (made with his mother's help).

Party number four: we, her grandparents, her aunt and uncle and her boyfriend all went out for dinner. After the meal the waiter brought out a slice of cake with a sparkler in it. (She scarfed down that cake as if she hadn't been fed in DAYS!)

Party number five: we then came home to - you guessed it -- cake number four, an ice-cream cake!

No surprise we still have leftover cake, of three different varieties. I guess there's always room for more where cake is concerned.

Happy eighteenth, Emma-Lou!