Birthday 13

 This week we celebrated Megan's 13th birthday. So now all our children are teenagers. And we are so blessed! I was looking forward to these years and I am not being disappointed. Yes there are challenges and I sure loved the little years too but this time period is pretty cool. These children of ours are all so close to stepping out and living life without us (less than a month before Mara gets married) and we are seeing how God is using them and their potential for serving Him in the future and it is pretty exciting!

We did some measuring after I took this picture and found that Mara is 5' 9" (no change lately), Jonathan is 6' 4 1/2", Aaron is 5' 8" and Megan 5' 2". The youngest 3 have all been growing lately and I am guessing especially with the youngest 2 that there will be quite a bit of growing this year. We shall see.

   Megan's birthday is fun. She more than any of the others likes to make it a special event. So months before the birthday arrived she was designing a dress to wear and a cake to make. She drew pictures of dress designs, made a pattern and figured out fabric (from our stash of course - we generally don't buy things when we are making things we use from things we have been given) and then started sewing. I helped a little here and there with advice but it is her project.

She isn't ready to go professional with her dressmaking but she did a pretty good job.

The white fabric came from a duvet cover that we had been given, the dark blue fabric was leftover from a project years ago, the light blue chiffon fabric was leftover from a bridesmaids dress that I made over 10 years ago. The buttons, trims and zippers had been in our stash for a long time. It was lovely for her to put these items to use.

She has been watching tons of cake decorating videos on Youtube and this was her creation for the day. A 3 layer chocolate cake with chocolate pudding, frosting and cream cheese fillings and then mint chocolate chip frosting with chocolate glaze and cream cheese frosting roses. On top is a 3 layer angel food cake (made from scratch).

She set aside the day before her birthday for making it. :-)

 It was pretty rich but quite delicious.

Megan has been wanting a hope chest and that seemed like a good 13th birthday present. So I took a break from the wedding sewing and projects and with Ken's help in cutting the wood (I can use a chop saw fine but the circular saw and table saw scare me a bit) we made her a hope chest.  

 It turned out plenty big and she thinks it is fun to get inside of it.

The boys think that is fun too and they then get on top of it. Silly boys!

 We used wood that came from a tree that we cut down while building our house and then my dad cut it up on his sawmill and with his help we planed the boards later. I used an old leather belt to make handles on the ends. We used screws and hinges that we had on hand.

 My mom gave her some doilies for her hope chest that had been made by my Grandma. Keren and family gave her cake pans and cake decorating things and MollyBea and family gave her a lovely apron so she is getting all sorts of kitcheny things for her hope chest.

 Three of my nephews were over for Megan's birthday and they were the most adorable helpers for getting all the presents unwrapped!

 Megan was pretty excited that because she is now 13 she could get a accounts on Facebook, Gmail and Pinterest.

  Megan thought her birthday was super fun and we had fun with it as well. We are so blessed to have a Megan in our family.