And some birthday pictures

It was pointed out that it was slightly ironic that in a blog post moaning about the lack of pictures from P.'s first few days that I didn't post any pictures of her at 13. Well, the child is difficult to get a photo of. Like many of my children, she is going through a camera-aversion phase (if something that lasts many years can be a phase). I did get some last night when we celebrated her birthday.

M. and B. were able to join us which made the party more fun (and loud). Here are some pictures.

You know our continuing difficulty with people not choosing cake for dessert and having no place for candles (plus, often, just a lack of candles). Well, M. solved that for me by find three candles that added up to 13.

Just about to blow her candles. 

This is G. Attractive, huh? B. had the camera and asked her to make a funny face.

A nice picture of D.

This is P. doing a great job of looking excited for the sake of her sister after opening this present. To really understand, you have to hear the back story of my day yesterday. L. became consumed with giving gifts to P. Yes, I know, the sentiment is very sweet and not one to be discouraged. But in reality, here is what it looked like. L. can be a little bit single minded and she fixated on gifts for P. This meant she went through her room looking for anything that she was willing to give up and then wanted to wrap them RIGHT NOW!. This was after lunch and right before naptime which ended up with L. in near hysterics over her need to wrap a gift. I finally got her calmed down with the promise of working on the gift wrapping after nap time. I gave P. a heads up that she really needed to appreciate all the emotional energy that went into her sister's gifts (there were many).

This is L. watching P. open up the gifts. You can see she is thrilled with the whole process.

TM, H. and A.

The other terribly funny moment of the evening came when P. opened up one of the many, many cards that K. had made for her. K. is discovering that he can write words by sounding them out. It is very exciting to watch and it is what he is spending large amounts of time doing. So he made cards for P. and decorated them with some of his new words. P. opens this one and starts laughing out loud. Because who doesn't want to see the word, "FAT" printed in huge letters on the inside when one opens a birthday card?

H., wearing B.'s glasses.

Pray for K. tomorrow as he heads into surgery. I won't know the exact time until they call tonight and I will update as I can. The doctor will be doing a lip and nose revision and only expects it to take an hour. Once again, I will be a happier person when we're on the other side of it.