Shame on us!

Us being BJ, 'Uel, and I and the shame being not updating our blogs. My most sincere apologies to everyone. Chera motivated me over the phone yesterday, so here we go!

I had a wonderful birthday! Yes, I'm an official 'dolt, the big 18! This birthday was particularly spread out with no official party because Dad, Mama, Isaac, and Caleb all left for Chicago on my birthday (more on that later). Dad and Mama got me a teach-yourself-to-fiddle book with cd that I'm positively itching to get started in. Mama had to have Saied Music store order it. They called when it came in, Ethan took the message, and delivered it to Mama right in front of me. Oops! So I got that one about a month early. When BonnieJean, Samuel, and Ku-yu went to Frontier City, BJ picked me up a little bag of colorful rocks to go in my aquarium. They're really pretty! When Samuel got home he took pity on me constantly emptying my 16 mb picture card on my camera and got me a 256 card as a birthday present. He gave that to me a couple days before my graduation party so I could click away to my heart's content, which I have most certainly been doing. A couple of days before my birthday a package from the lovely Chera arrived. In it was a CD of more happy music which we have been listening to a lot, watermelon popping candy, and purple dye for my gi! Turns out that last item was the genius of Samuel-Chera had contacts within my base! I can't wait to see the looks at the dojo when I wear that!

We went paintballing the morning of my birthday becasue it was Ku-yu's last chance to go paintballing. We (BJ, Ku-yu, Ethan, Joshua, and I) were the only people there so we had a lot of fun being really sneaky and strategizing a lot.

We hadn't planned anything actually for the day of my birthday, but it just so happened that the coop group planned a formal bowling party for that day. God definitely has a sense of humor. Some people had asked me if I was doing any kind of prom thing since it was my senior year. I had always said that it would be fun to go bowling like Mama ended up doing on her prom night. Lo, and behold! a formal bowling party. It was an absolute blast! Us B. went in two cars to the bowling alley. The boys and I were just getting started on our game when BJ and Naomi come in with a dozen yellow roses saying someone asked them to deliver them to me. The only person I could think of was Dad but that didn't quite make sense because mama had had to remind him that morning that it was my birthday. So I opened the card and it was from Chera! I was completely surprised and thrilled! BJ pulled it off perfectly even managing to buy the roses at Walmart when we had been there earlier. A little later Jesse got everybody to sing to me and made me bowl left-handed and wish on the strike. Naturally, I didn't get the strike but I would have wished to always have friends like I've been blessed with so far-my fam, Wilbur Gang, Chera, karate people, and the coop crowd. Mrs. L. gave me a sprig of pink roses later. Turns out Mrs. B. had made me a cake for us to have there at the bowling alley but she had forgotten. We picked it up today; 'twas a luscious vanilla cake with pink icing and real strawberries on top. Yum! After bowling, we went to the Will Rogers Hotel ballroom for dinner, music, and a surprise for Sarah L.'s birthday. Jesse, Ricky, Mitchel, and Randy did a song for her and then we all told stories on her and Haley showed some old home movies that they had done of Star Wars and Star Trek. It was a scream! I'm so glad that Emily and Jesse got it together because Sarah is always the one remembering other people's special days, planning fun things for us, doing the yearbook, etc.. She really deserved it and it was really special to get to help surprise her. The other surprise of the evening was when Jesse pulled Megan up on stage and had us all toast her which made her cry. She's heading to OK City soon to go to the Nazarene college there. We're all going to miss her! Samuel wasn't feeling well so we ended up leaving a little early. :(

Ku-yu's flight left the next morning and with security we had to have him at the airport by 5. We knew we would be past bedtime with the party and we wanted to watch some videos so we decided just to stay up the whole night. We ate popcorn, played dutch blitz, watched Ice Princess and Con-Air and had a blast. After getting back from the airport I did the morning animal chores and went to bed around 6. I had been up 23 hours and slept until noon. It was a real fun time and a grand birthday!

As some of y'all know this month is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary! For their honeymoon they went to Chicago for a reception Dad's sisters had planned. So for their 25th, they're going to Chicago for Dad's nephew's wedding. We were going to send them alone but they decided to take Isaac and Caleb for a couple of reasons: they hardly ever get to have the little boys by themselves without having to look after us big kids, Dad's relatives haven't really gotten to know the little boys, and they suspected we would be doing all kind of crazy, late-night things that would only make the little boys grumpy and hard to handle. I sure hope they're having fun. We miss them a lot but they'll be home tomorrow night.

Not only have I not posted here but I haven't looked at bloggers or the RI in just as long. I'm gonna have to catch up the next couple of days.