Beth's Birthday

Last Friday was Beth's birthday.  Sometimes I feel like we are the same age, other times I forget that she has aged at all and isn't a little girl anymore.  I was seven when Beth was born, so I vividly remember going to the hospital to see her for the first time.  I remember wanting to hold her all the time.  When she was a toddler, I was probably the proudest big sister you can imagine.  I loved to brag about all the cute things she was doing and saying.  Then I became a teenager and she was just the annoying little sister.  Then she became a teenager and I was just the annoying older sister.  And now, we are both adults, one a bit older than the other, and it seems we have weathered the storm of "growing up" pretty well.  I am so lucky to have two sisters who are genuinely my closest friends.

For her birthday, my parents bought Beth a giant plant encyclopedia.  Seriously, this book is huge and weighs a ton.  As I've mentioned before (here in this post), I love to watch Beth open her presents.  She has such animated facial expressions, I find it very entertaining.  I've narrowed it down to my three favorites, both to spare you the boredom of looking at a dozen very similar pictures, and also to spare Beth the embarrassment that would no doubt result from some of the pictures I took.  Some of them were not so flattering to say the least.

First, we made her close her eyes, because we're a cheesy family like that.  But also because we were lame and didn't wrap it.  She was excited just from the Barnes & Noble box.  Then I made her pose like a little kid with her new present, and for some reason, she didn't turn out so red in the last picture.  Hmmm, not really sure what is going on there, but I was too impatient to fix it.  So sorry Beth, I'll assume you were red in the first two pictures because of the blood rushing to your head as a result of all the excitement.

Thanks to Beth's birthday, we had an excuse to have a delicious family dinner, where I only ate a tiny little bit because I had spent the previous three hours pigging out on hot artichoke dip, french bread, and tomato sauce.  Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily simultaneously.  I love my family and I love eating food and mostly, I love eating food with my family.

And no family evening would be complete without pictures of Laci - long after she should be in bed, when the crazies have taken over and she becomes a silly, loud, clown baby.