Happy New Year! Marissa is Eleven!

We had a very fun New Year's Day this year. Our church had a New Year's Eve party at our new building. We had lots of good food, played games & then prayed out the old year & prayed in the new year. Everyone wished Marissa a happy birthday, too, which was fun for her. :) Our family left about 1:35 am, but others were there for a couple more hours! It was a very fun party. :)

Later in the day, after we had some sleep, we had our pastor's family over for Marissa's birthday party (that's just part of the "crew" in the photo). As if we all hadn't had enough games the night before, we played games again! And we enjoyed cheesecake (Marissa prefers it to regular cake)... this was the first time I'd made the "full fat" version... with 35 grams per serving. Yikes!! But it was good. :)

It's always fun to celebrate Marissa's birthday. She is such a sweet, loving person who enjoys making & giving things to other people. So it's always fun to celebrate her birth, and give her gifts! I think she was secretly hoping for a new cat, since Jasper disappeared 2 1/2 months ago, so she may have been disappointed. But she got lots of art supplies, horse stuff and other miscellaneous things she likes. Yesterday, she made dinner from Addy's Cookbook (an American Girl book) that my brother & his wife gave her... the meal was *delicious* and she only needed just a little guidance from me! :)

I believe I've posted the rest of our kids' birth stories on this blog at some point in the past, but don't think I've done Marissa's yet. I'll have to check... if I haven't, maybe I'll post it here sometime. It was a good birth experience, a very different one by most people's standards, and a fun story to tell. Well, if you're me, any of our kids' birth stories is fun to tell, since I love talking about natural childbirth! But that will have to wait for another post...

Oh, wait! I just checked and I *did* post Marissa's birth story 2 years ago. Here it is...

Happy 2008, and thanks for stopping by!!