Courtney’s Sweet Sixteen

What’s a girl to do when she’s planned and daydreamed about something for months, even years?! Well, you drag out the actual event for almost 2 weeks! I can’t remember when Courtney first started talking about her 16th birthday; I know it’s been at least a year. Easily. Who knew it would end up being more like a birthWEEK or birth-week-and-a-half.  :-)

Two weeks ago, we were being socked by a winter storm, followed by two days of arctic temperatures (I think the high temperature was –11 one day) which the experts said was caused by a “polar vortex”. The storm hit on Sunday; Monday and Tuesday were the extremely cold days, Courtney’s birthday was on Wednesday. Since it was still very cold and snowy, I had to work and Grandma was sick, we decided to postpone the party. But we decided to have a little celebration here at home with just us. Since I had to work all day, that ruled out anything homemade for dinner and cake. Kroger came to the rescue with jarred spaghetti sauce, frozen meatballs, frozen garlic bread and even a chocolate fudge cake! We had a few gifts for her to open and rescheduled for the following Sunday with Grandma and Grandpa.

 

Grandma and Grandpa were able to make it on Sunday and we were able to do all our usual birthday stuff: nice meal, homemade Strawberry Shortcake for the birthday dessert, all three verses of Happy Birthday, and gift opening in the living room.

 

The Strawberry Shortcake was delicious – tasty, fresh fruit year-round has got to be one of the nicest benefits of living in the Modern Age. The recipe I follow for the shortcake is very simple; I got it from a Strawberry Shortcake cookbook Mom gave to one of the girls years ago. I use it every time we have this dessert. I often use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the shortcakes, but sometimes I use a flower-shape, which is what I did this time. This is what Mick’s plate looked like. Can you tell it’s one of his favorite desserts?

When Mom picked out her shortcake, she found that she just couldn’t bring herself to eat it – er … him ... Her?

Ha!  The two “eye” holes were made from the candles. I promise we were not intending this when we were hurriedly putting the candles in the shortcakes! It was the only shortcake that looked like that – with the perfectly placed sideways crack for a smile. :-) We all had a good laugh at it, but strangely, no one could bring themselves to eat it!  :-D  It sat on the counter for a couple of days until two hungry little boys snagged it and I caught them hiding under the barstools nibbling on it.  :-D

We also planned a “friend” birthday party, with 21 of Courtney’s closest friends on the guest list.  ;-)

Here is the invitation we emailed:

 

On Wednesday evening, Courtney’s friend Moriah flew in for the party. Thursday found central Indiana getting hit with another winter storm; nothing like the previous one, but more snow and cold. Thankfully, the roads were cleared quickly. On Friday, Rachel made 8 homemade pizza crusts and a huge salad, Texas Sheet Cake and Orange Bars. Meanwhile, I picked up cousin Holly and brought her up from Indianapolis with me, and then, around 5:30, everyone else started showing up.

I think we had a total of 17 guests who were able to come. Our friend George made on good on his threat to crash the party, but he was only here for a short time, while waiting for friends to pick him up when they dropped off their girls.

The girls all had a great time eating, chatting, laughing and making bracelets together.

 

 

 

 

The fun continued on into the weekend, with 3 cousins and Moriah here Saturday night into Sunday morning, and cousin Holly and Moriah here Sunday night! Last night, around 9:00, the girls pushed back the dining room table and started doing some impromptu dances to Irish jigs, and when I got into bed around 11:00, I could hear them laughing downstairs while they played Apples to Apples.  It’s been an exciting week and I think I can safely say it lived up to all the months and months (years?) of build-up.  :-)

I’ll end with just a few pictures of Courtney through the years. Keep in mind, the vast majority of my pictures of her before the age of 10 have not been scanned yet!