Happy 13th Birthday, Ryder!

We'd barely finished getting the decorations up and then it was Ryder's birthday!  Trying to squeeze all his birthday celebrations in at the end of November/beginning of December is tricky, but we pulled it off!  His actual birthday was on Tuesday, and he opened this before heading to school:  

A Mistborn sweatshirt from the Richards!  He was thrilled!  (Also I just think he looks great here!)

And that evening we had his dinner of choice (fried ramen) and cake before dashing off for Young Womens (I'd stupidly managed to schedule our activity to begin earlier than normal, not making the connection that I'd want to be home for cake with my birthday boy!  Fortunately everyone else managed to pitch in and the activity went splendidly).

He wanted a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.  Um, okay?  

Thursday we celebrated with grandparents!  Ryder asked that we eat at Tip Top Diner, which was fun (although very loud for some reason?) and after bouncing around a bit, ended up getting ice cream from Cold Stone (Krispy Kreme had closed early and nothing looked good at the Wegman's bakery), and then finally opening presents from Grandma and Grandpa.

(Our tree looks so lovely in the background!)

It's hard to actually see it, but he got an old-school metal slinky.  I think it lasted about two days before it was a hopelessly tangled mess...

And then on Friday he had his friends party!  He hemmed and hawed about it for a few days, but ultimately decided to invite his church friends rather than his school friends (I was glad he didn't try to mix the two groups-- that usually ends up being weird!) and they had a really good time!  I think it helps that his church friends don't have cell phones yet so they actually interact with each other and watch the movie.  (He'd been to a friend's birthday party the week before and everyone ignored the movie so they could watch TikTok!  I'm so worried for the attention span of the rising generation!)  Craig got to be home in charge of the party while I took the other kids to Soup Night at the Rawlins' home.  He said that everyone had a great time and they all seemed very happy when I got home, so that was good!

Here we can see Megan, Daniel, Peter, Cedric, Truman, Gideon and Camille all surrounding the birthday boy!  And they're eating red velvet s'more brownies, which was great because there wasn't too much left over for me to eat afterwards!  

I was glad we managed to do right by Ryder, even if it's a very busy time!  😅  And really, I can't believe that we now have three teenagers under one roof!  Heaven help us all!!!