Karlee's 11th Birthday!

On January 29th Karlee turned 11 years old. She didn't give a list of things she wanted but asked if she could have a slumber party. She invited four friends. At first she had wanted to invite her cousin, Conley, but since he is a 12 year old boy, we put a nix on that. We figured the other mothers might not think that was a very good idea.

So she had her cousin, Aspyn, and three other friends, Brilee, Madison, and Risalyn. They had pizza for dinner and then opened gifts.

It is a good thing that they are good at entertaining themselves. Because I didn't have anything else planned. They watched a movie upstairs and I think they were asleep by 11:30.

The next morning most of the girls had to be to a basketball game. So I made them french toast and the party was pretty much over by 10 a.m.

On Saturday night we did our traditional family dinner out on the town. Karlee chose to go to Sizzler.
Sunday was her actual birthday so that is when the presents came out. It works out pretty good to have a birthday on Sunday, because then you really get to celebrate all weekend long.

Karlee got several new shirts, that is always the boring part of the birthday at this age, the needs, not the wants. I was quite pleased when Grandma Terry asked her at Sunday dinner what she had received for her birthday. She gave the list of the few things from her friends. And we had given her a DVD of Kung Fu Panda 2 that they could watch at the slumber party. Then she said, "And my big gift was the slumber party. Most moms wouldn't do that." At this point I rolled my eyes and Zak said, "Nice brown nosing!" But it still pleased me that she wasn't really expecting anything else. It made it much more fun to see her eyes light up when I came out of the bedroom with two small sacks and a big box.
The first bag had the boring shirts. Then I had her open the box. I knew this was all she was getting so I wanted her to be able to open more than one box.
So inside the first box was this bag.

Inside the bag was this shoe box. Even Zak fell for it when he said, "Those shoes must be huge!"

Inside the shoe box was a smaller book box. Now everyone realized something was going on. And the usual, "Mom, you are crazy, " came out.

The last box was a check box and I announced that Karlee would be getting her own checking account.

Ahh, the money shot when she realized it was an iPod touch, 8G. And yes, I am crazy...

The third small sack had an iPod cover, headphones, and a screen protector. So yes, as the boys said, "You are so spoiled!" I guess sometimes not asking for anything pays off. Although she had asked for it for Christmas and I laughed in her face. It is okay to just get one nice thing for a birthday, but just one thing at Christmas would be kind of boring, even though that would be a lot less stressful for Mom. Hmmmm, maybe we will institute that for next year.

Eleven candles which she did a terrible job of blowing out since she didn't want to spit on the cake. Oh well, what wish could she possibly have now that she has an iPod touch in her pocket! Zak is in the background video taping it on the new iPod.

We love you Karlee!