Carolyn Turns 13

Where does the time go? I have a teenager!  Carolyn celebrated her 13th birthday on September 15.  We had a pretty low key day - I gave her the play by play of the day 13 years ago and she grows less and less interested in it every year. Scooter made her a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. He was so proud of his frosting.  We had a party with six other girls on Saturday the 21st.  Carolyn was very excited to get to go to the mall and be on her own with her friends (I hung out at the Apple store trying to get my iPad fixed...who knew I'd have to wait two hours!). I had set up a scavenger hunt -- well, not like they had to go look for clues:  they had to gather some items and take pictures of others. They had a really fun time and found everything they needed in the allotted time.  On our way home someone suggested a Chinese fire drill and I think that proved to be the most exciting part of the party!  I got a chuckle out of these girls.  One girl says, "Hey!  We should do a Chinese fire drill!"  The other girls ask, "What's that?"  Girl one explains. I stop the car in the middle of our quiet street, they jump out, run around the car, get back in and someone quickly says, "Let's do that again!" So I drive to an actual traffic light and the conversation goes, "Are we really doing this again?  Cool!  OK.  Let's be organized. Who's going close to the car? Who's going farther away? And we should all go in the same direction."  I shook my head and thought, "They are learning problem solving skills!" It was a good time.  We came back to the house for pizza and cake. Everyone home by 6:00.  I was asleep on the couch by 9.

This is Carolyn's Cake.
We found the idea on Pinterest -
we kind of combined a couple different ideas.

There's my birthday girl!

We made a 'tie dye' cake.
Looked cool and tasted very yummy.
I scored some 'cool mom' points with Carolyn's friends on the cake.

We were finishing dinner just now and Carolyn said, "Dang. We didn't have cake for breakfast today." I said, "Well there's still some left. You can have it tomorrow for breakfast." She looked at me like I was crazy (or very cool?!) and said, "But we have school tomorrow." I said, "Well you still need breakfast...pancakes or cake cake?  What's the difference?" and she said, "Just about 300 grams of sugar!"  Yes. She was also the one who said, "Let's be more organized" on the second Chinese fire drill. That's my girl!