Well friends, today is the big day…. John’s 16th birthday! I am so proud of the young man he has become, and for the supreme blessing of being his mom. He’s driven, hard-working, kind, a leader, easy to befriend and has a pretty fantastic sense of humor. I often glimpse him walking into a room and he takes my breath away. How did my precious little boy rush so quickly through the kid years to become this young man?
He sounds like the model child from this recap, but remember I am his mother and this is his birthday. :-) Parenting a teenager has had its moments. It’s frustrating, inspiring, maddening, joyful, challenging, easy, rewarding and so on and so forth. It is surreal to reach the point in parenting a child where you vividly remember being that age.
We woke up to honks as friends and neighbors passed our house and it has continued all day. It was an unexpected bit of joy and happiness, hearing people honk for John!
We decided to leave the bubble tent up in the backyard through the holiday and have loved using it! We enjoyed the birthday boy’s breakfast of choice – bagels – out here!
We gave John the keys to Honey’s jeep, a couple of gas cards to get him started and a “gift certificate” for a key chain or lanyard of his choice.
In the weeks before his birthday, Honey had the car tuned up and detailed and he replaced the floor mats and a few things like that. I topped it with a big red bow!
This Wrangler was Honey’s dream car and I still remember the day he brought it home – October 2008 – like it was yesterday! John and I were so excited for his arrival!! We even chalked up the driveway in anticipation.
John climbed right in and pretended to drive away.
Never in our wildest dreams did we see this day coming!
I even chalked up the driveway for John, and we showed him pictures and recounted the day the Jeep came home. <3
We ended the evening with another amazing steak dinner! His grandparents and Aunt M and Uncle C joined in on the fun. Sister’s family couldn’t attend this one as it was CeeCee’s first Nutcracker of the season.
As I cleaned up from the party on Monday, I found birthday cards scattered about the house. There were a few more located in the basement after this pic, in fact. It warmed my heart that a bunch of teenagers shopped for them, made them, and hand wrote the most beautiful, funny and sentimental things inside. Even the one that says “son” is from his best friend and his entire family wrote inside. Teens get a lot of bad press, but the ones that are in and out of my house on a weekly basis are pretty amazing kids.
It was a wonderful week celebrating this milestone birthday with family, friends and food. Happy Birthday, John. You are loved. <3
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