Earlier this week my oldest child turned 13. How on earth did I get old enough to have a thirteen year old? Yes, I do, in fact, know I’m old enough to have a child much older than 13, but still wasn’t she just born?

We had a difficult time knowing what we were going to do to celebrate the momentous occasion, because you know it isn’t every day you turn 13. We had some ideas, and none of them seemed to work out. It appeared she wasn’t going to have any gifts to open on her day.

Tragic!

I had hosted a 31 Gifts party (are you familiar with them??? Oh my! I love them) last week and ordered her birthday gifts, but they would not arrive on time for her birthday. Our plan was to cut the items out of the catalog, place them in an envelope for her to open. Enter Bountiful Baskets (are you familiar with that? Look it up! Bountiful Baskets) and my friend, who also happens to be a 31 Gifts consultant. It seems Kirby knew she would see me at Bountiful Baskets pick up and so she brought along one of the birthday gifts. What a sweetheart.

So my oldest had one gift to open. Yay! One might be the loneliest number, but it is better than number none.

I ran intervals with a friend of mine and, once at home I realized how much I deeply needed an iced coffee from McDonald’s. I mean I NEEDED it. I was dying for it. I asked the girlies if they were up for coffee, and of course they said yes.

Due to road construction (what town doesn’t have road construction all summer long? I want to move there.), we had to take a detour, right past Beanie’s dance academy, which really didn’t remind me of anything important until due to more road construction I had to turn around, and I noticed cars in the academy’s parking lot. Then it hit me; she had jazz class in 20 minutes and she’s supposed to be ten minutes early! No time to run through McDonald’s drive through for coffee. Instead we zipped home where she changed into her dance clothes, and we promised we’d get her mocha frappe. We zip back, drop her off and tool our way to McDonalds.

Our favorite employee was working which was a bonus for us. This is the same employee I talked about here, and this morning she asked how my morning was, and I asked how her morning was, you know, normal chit-chat. She told me her day was “different”, I told her my day was also different because for the first time I had a teenager as it was her (pointing to my girly) birthday. The employee hands me my change, says “Okay, I have to do this fast”, and proceeds to sing Happy Birthday to my daughter.  It was beautiful. Both of us were beaming from ear-to-ear.

For most of the day when I would ask, “What is your favorite thing about today so far?” my daughter would answer, “When A sang to me.” It ranks up at the top for me too. i

The only downer? When I called the store to say how much we appreciated it, how much we liked A, the manager’s response was “oh. Okay. I guess I’ll tell her.” We were kind of hoping for a little more enthusiasm. But even still, the song ranks high in our book.