Worley's World: Erica’s 13th

Erica’s 13th birthday, although it was the 4th Worley birthday of 2013, will be remembered for being the birthday party Grandma and Grandpa were able to come to!

It was a difficult drive for Mom, but they were able to make the trip up here and spend a couple of hours with Erica on her special day. The birthday girl requested fried chicken, mac 'n cheese, baked potato wedges, fruit salad, biscuits and chocolate milk for her birthday dinner. It was a little bit more difficult to pull off the celebrating this year because her birthday fell on a Tuesday, which is Rachel’s piano lesson day. So on a typical Tuesday, I’m gone from about 1:15 to about 4:15 – prime time for preparing for a birthday dinner. This particular Tuesday, I also had a 90-minute training session to attend in the morning at the office of one of my clients. I wouldn’t have done this on Erica’s birthday, except that (1) this client has never offered anything like this before, so I wanted to take advantage of the rare training opportunity; and 2) it was just a short session and would be over with by lunchtime. It was actually 2 days of training, so on the second day (the day after Erica’s birthday), I took Erica with me and we went out to lunch at Steak ‘n Shake downtown. She ordered chicken nuggets and had a dark chocolate shake. (OK, I had one, too. ;-) While we were there, we went to Circle Centre Mall and got Erica’s ears pierced at Claire’s! I’m just now smacking my head, because I don’t think we’ve taken any pictures of her with pierced ears. Oh, I take it back – just found this picture that I snapped a week ago. If you look very closely, you can see a tiny earring. :-)

The birthday girl requested coffee cake for her birthday cake. I think that was a first for one of our kids!

And since Erica’s birthday falls so close to Valentine’s Day, the Reese’s heart has become a birthday tradition for her. We’ve been giving them to her for at least the past 5 years.

One funny thing that happened during Erica’s birthday is documented in these (somewhat blurry) pictures.Because the day of her birthday was so busy, I had to recruit some giftwrapping helpers. I can’t remember who actually did the wrapping (I think it was a couple of the girls), but there was some confusion when all the wrapped gifts were brought downstairs. As Erica was opening one of the boxes, and carefully digging through the tissue … and wrapping paper scraps … and empty scotch tape roll … that we realized this wasn’t a gift at but a box that was used to put trash in while they were wrapping! It was pretty funny! I’m thinking we probably have this on tape, so we’ll have to look through our video archives for it

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Erica has always been a voracious reader, as are all of our kids, thankfully, so I have several pictures of Erica reading, some of which I’ve posted on the blog already, and others I’ve just intended to post on the blog. This next one was taken last summer when Lily the kitty was just a few months old. She’s never been much of a lap kitty, so she spent much of her time moving around nervously while Erica read.

This past year at the Worleys could’ve been dubbed “The Year of Moviemaking.” Several of the girls ventured into creating, filming, directing and/or starring in their own original movie sand it’s been fun to see their creativity come up in a new way. Erica got “in on the act” last summer and created a short film. One of my favorite scenes is this one. The Wanderings of Jennifer and Adelaide - Scene 2

The effect of her taping while running beside Sarah and Brooke is very effective, I think. I get the feeling I’m running along with them, which I would never be able to do in real life, of course. <grin>

2012 will also be remembered as “The Year of Ballet” and especially the Sleeping Beauty recital.

Erica and Courtney both take ballet lessons very seriously, as is evidenced by Erica’s expression in these pictures. :-)

I still haven’t gotten the technique of taking good pictures while they are dancing. They always look better in person than what I can capture in a picture, but I’m working on it.

And now for a few baby/little girl pictures of Erica. In the first one, I can’t get over how much she looks like Trent! I don’t remember her cheeks being that chubby!