Delaney's Birthday

My sweet daughter is now 15!! How she has managed to grow up into such a beautiful, happy, confident young lady is a little beyond me but I'm so grateful that she has. She seems to have escaped much of the teenage angst that plagued me at that age. And true to form, she has adapted wonderfully well to the major upheaval of an overseas move. She has already made friends with great girls, planned a full and active schedule for the next school year, has babysitting clients and seen more of Turkey than I have! She is on track to achieve her goal of finishing high school in the next two years which means when we move again she will be off to college. I'm excited for her but sad for me.

But enough of that. On to her birthday celebrations. I had a little more advance notice for this one and was able to order a present online and do some shopping off base for a few more. We started her special day with breakfast in bed. She is the one who is usually doing this for other family members of their birthdays so I wanted to make sure she had some pampering on her birthday. She also had a card from her Grandpa Leo (thanks Dad) and her first present to open - a pair of earrings with evil eye stones that I bought out in the Alley.

Looks yummy, huh? Don't be too impressed though - those are Eggo's.

Her dad took her out for lunch at the mall off base. They had Pizza Hut (I have no idea why). She also got to watch Geoffrey get a hair cut experience at the Pretty Women Man Salon in the alley. He had gotten a really bad haircut at the club barbershop that morning so he went somewhere else to have it fixed. He walked out an hour later with his hair cut perfectly, his eyebrows trimmed and threaded, his nose hair trimmed and his ear hair singed off with some flaming candle thing. He said he had no say in the matter and that the eyebrow threading hurt like heck but they did follow it up with some soothing creme and a massage. All that set him back all of $13.

That evening we had a back to school party with the branch at the base pool, which they had rented out. Everyone sang happy birthday to Delaney at dinner. The party was great and even though Delaney, Carson, and Evan had been in their swimsuits every day that week at the Wet and Wild Week, they still had a good time. I even went off the diving board a few times and down the water slide, much to my children's delight.

Sunday afternoon we had one of her favorite dishes, Angel Chicken Pasta, for dinner and brookie sundaes for dessert. (Brookies are brownies baked with globs of chocolate chip cookie dough in them. Super yum! You should try them.) And she opened a few more presents. I had ordered her a Ipod docking station/CD player for her room. She had a small alarm clock docking station that recently died so it was a good choice. I also bought her a pretty lamp off base in one of the stores.

Apparently these lamps are kind of a touristy thing but they are very pretty. She was very happy with her gifts and with her birthday celebrations.

There she is - my only daughter. A refuge of femininity in this sea of testosterone that is our mostly male family. I would say she's growing up too fast but really she's just right on schedule. I enjoyed her when she was a darling toddler and a sassy kid holding her own against her brothers and I enjoy her now as a sparkling, vibrant young lady. And though I am glad that so far all her boyfriends are not real . . .

I know one day she will be the best thing that ever happened to some lucky young man who could never really deserve her.