For years, we have celebrated the kids' birthdays with both friends and family. Consistently, I have based the birthdays around a theme (with no duplicates!) and have always chosen something that the kids are interested in and love at that time.
As they are getting older, they are deviating away from that and opting for a smaller celebration. Some things will never change though -- we always have cinnamon rolls with a candle and sing happy birthday on their birthday morning.
Samantha's only request for her birthday this year was to have me make a cake (obviously!!!) and she asked for a 'jeep cake' since that is what she is driving now. I added her to our insurance policy the morning of her birthday because she is officially a certified driver.
I did not use a mold and simply created her jeep cake from scratch and it turned out pretty good for something in 3D. She loved it and it truly looks like the jeep that she is driving since I tried to match the color as closely as possible and make it only have 2 doors.
And, in true fashion, I couldn't just do a cake and not bring in a few streamers and other decor, so I surprised her with some sparkly silver.
She is almost as tall as Steve now, like only shorter by 3 inches or so. Obviously she surpassed my height a long time ago.
New converse shoes. Converse shoes have now come back in fashion and she asked for red ones for her birthday.
Sophia picked out a jewelry organizer for her because it was a hot mess up in her room with random necklaces, rings, earrings and whatnot scattered about on her vanity and dresser top.
Of course, Ainsley was over from next door for the festivities and I love how serious they are in this picture separating some of the jewelry that I had picked out for her to add to the organizer.
Happy 16th birthday to my first-born; the girl that made me a momma and who is becoming more and more independent every day. We are so incredibly proud of her!
(A side note on the cut-out '16' on the wall: I drew and cut the numbers out myself by hand and when I originally cut out the '6' it was slight disaster. I am not even sure where I went wrong when drawing it, but suffice to say that it is not very easy to cut out a '6.' I discretely threw it into the trash and made a second/better one. Sophia found the embarrassment and showed it to everyone ... which made for some great laughs. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a couple of days later that my family was actually saving it to randomly pull out whenever we needed a chuckle. It has since been properly disposed of, ha!).
