“Leave it to Psmith” by P. G. Wodehouse

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!

This one is a good representation of three-year-old Erica Danielle.  :-)

In spite of being a very active and talkative little girl, she did occasionally slow down long enough to sleep.  :-)

Happy Birthday, Erica!

Brooke’s 9th

From about 2002 through 2008 our camcorder was a Sony Digital 8. Looks just like this:

For future generations, this type of camcorder was the part of the last of a dying breed. You see, this camcorder used a type of media device called a “tape.”

So, when you recorded with the camcorder, it was placed on the tape. In order to watch the tape, you had to use cables to connect the camcorder to the TV. I know it sounds positively prehistoric, but that was the technology at the time. Unfortunately, some time in 2008, the camcorder stopped working. We bought a new one pretty quickly, since I was expecting Grant, and the old Hi-8 was quickly forgotten. At some point, we realized that we had a whole lot of tapes from the Lost Years that we had no way of watching! Thankfully, my industrious husband found a YouTube clip that showed how to fix the exact problem we were having with the camcorder. This was a few weeks ago, and since then we have had a great time watching the tapes from these years.

Today, we were watching the tapes from when Brooke was a newborn. Like all parents, I find myself saying things like “I can’t believe that was 9 years ago!” and “Look how much everyone has changed!”

For instance, when Brooke was born, Courtney and Rachel looked like this:

Erica looked like this:

Sarah looked like this:

Mick and I looked like this:

and Brooke looked like this:

Uh, I mean, she looked like this:

A funny little story about her hospital hat: when the nurse was getting her all cleaned up and ready, she first put on Brooke a hat with a red and white – or shall we say cream and crimson – ball on top. As any self-respecting Hoosier knows, these are the colors for Indiana University. Mick, being the major Purdue fan, and wearing a Purdue sweatshirt at the time, I might add, immediately began loudly clearing his throat. When the nurse looked over, he gestured towards his sweatshirt. She said “Oh! Well, we have those hats, too.”  :-) Of course, when we had visitors come in the rest of the day, everyone kept assuming our little girl was a boy since she had black and gold on her hat.

But she has always been a feminine little thing, so very few people have mistaken her for a boy since then. We won’t count the time we were at the State Fair later that year. I was pushing Brooke – dressed in pink from head to toe - in the stroller and the girls were flanking me on all sides. At one point, an older gentleman came walking up laughing and said “Please tell me the one in pink is a boy!” He was delighted with the girls and said it reminded him of his own big family.

Brooke’s birthday this year fell on a typical cold winter January day in Indiana. But we managed to give the house a festival feel in spite of that. Courtney spent quite a while getting the glass ornaments just right over the table.

The birthday girl requested Mocha Layer Cake. Thankfully, I’ve made one or two of those in my day, so I was more than happy to grant this request.

Like most girls her age, Brooke loves stuffed animals, dolls and horses, so she was very happy with her birthday gifts.

Sadly, Grandma and Grandpa weren’t able to come, since Grandma is still recovering from her broken ribs, but we were able to set up a Skype session with them so it still felt like they were able to take part in the birthday celebration.

Happy 9th Birthday, Brooke! We love you!

 

P.S. Look who tried to sneak in on our picture.  <tee hee>

This little guy …

… is turning into quite a ham. Might have something to do with the adoring fans surrounding him every day and laughing at all his antics.  :-)

His verbal skills are really improving, too. Just yesterday, he was rebuking Erica for daring to cover him up with a blanket, when he really wanted me to do that. After he pulled the blanket back off and I covered him up, he looked at her and said “Say you’re sorry, Erica.”

And I‘d wager that roughly 75% of the photographs we have in the past couple of years are starring You Know Who (and for the record, the girls take almost as many photos as I do these days, so it’s not just me!).

Oh well. It’s all a part of toddlerhood. And we moms know how fleeting that time is. Drink it all in, little guy. 

“Macbeth” by William Shakespeare

Courtney’s online literature class read “Macbeth” recently. The instructor assigned the students parts and they “performed” the play during class.

You know, I read “Macbeth” in high school, too. But the experience wasn’t anything like this.

I’m not bitter. Really.