14!!

I know this is a week late, but I wanted to wait until all of the celebrating was over to post about Lexie's 14th birthday. Yes, that's right my baby is 14! (For those of you with babies, enjoy every second because it really does fly by!)


Birthdays have always been very important to me, and I always wanted Lexie to feel like her birthday was special. When she was born I started several traditions for her birthday. Before she started school I would always take the day off and we would celebrate all day. (She would kill me now if I even tried to take her out of school on her birthday.) We have a special birthday dinner, and Lexie gets to pick where we eat. Until last year, we would always have a special photo session on her birthday. Now she is involved in so many activities that we just try to get it in around her birthday. My favorite tradition: at the end of the day we would go to the hospital to see all of the babies that were born on her birthday. (Unfortunately we had to stop this tradition when we moved to California because at the hospital there, there was no way to even get back to see the babies unless you were a family member or friend. Security was tight. We haven't even tried since we moved back, I'm not sure if the hospitals here still have the babies out where anyone can see them.)


For most of her life, Lexie has had 3 birthday parties: one at home on the day of her birthday, one for the whole family, and one for just friends. Luckily now, Lexie loves homemade cakes and doesn't care about a theme, so it's not too difficult. And, I only have to buy one cake!

Lexie always opens one gift before school. She opened this new hoody. It wasn't cold that day, but she decided to wear it any way. I love the color of it.

Before our birthday dinner we stopped by Granny and Poppy's house. They also gave her one of her presents early.

Carter fell asleep on the way home, so we got to blow out candles and have cake in the living room. A rare treat! For her actually birthday cake she chose pineapple upside down cake. YUM!

Showing off their stylish bowling shoes.

Funny story about the kid sitting on the far left. He just moved to our town over the summer. When he called to RSVP, the area code was the same as the one we had in California. Turns out he moved here from a city 20 minutes away from ours in Cali. It gets better. He moved to that city about the time we moved to Cali. Before that he lived in our town about 5 minutes from where we lived in Cali. Small world!

Getting ready for Lazer Tag.

Somehow the bowling hour turned into arm wrestling hour. I think the boys just wanted an excuse to hold Lexie's hand ;-)

"Um, some help here please. My feet don't quite reach the pedals."

It is cheap entertainment when Carter plays video games. He played games for an hour and spent $0. Nice!

Cake number 2. A Tiffany's box.

Sorry Lexie; there is only cake inside this one.

Our "Party Heroes" were awesome! They did a great job relating to teenagers. A couple of the boys decided that they wanted the tablecloths to be their capes, so the party hero wrote their names on there for them.

It's pronounced "Skyler."

He went out and showed off his cape. He had no idea it said"Prince(ss)." It was funny. Don't worry, he is a hilarious kid. He thought it was funny when he found out.

Lexie got the number 14 go kart on her 14th birthday!

Lexie is too cool to throw her hands in the air. =)

After go karts, they came back to the room and did the "Cupid's Shuffle" and a few other dances.

For the family party, Lexie had my mom make her favorite cake. It's a strawberry jello cake. (I think it might be on the recipe blog. If not, I will add it.)

We got our new puppy just in time to show her off at Lexie's party. This is Cali. (Guess where we got that name?)

We had so much fun celebrating Lexie's birthday. I really can't believe she is already 14. She has started reading her driving book, but she's not ready for the test yet. I can't picture her behind the wheel of a car. Bring on the gray hair! Oh wait, I already have plenty of that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEXIE!! WE LOVE YOU!