I paid Tess her traditional birthday greetings at the exact minute of her birth... 29 minutes past midnight. ;o) As usual, she had no interest in celebrating at that hour... so I went back to bed.

Today is Tess's 14th birthday. We had her party at the bowling alley yesterday. She shared the party with her friend Becky who turned 15 last Thursday. The party went well... no bickering, no drama, no tears... A Great Success by teen girl standards!

It was a co-ed party. About 12-15 girls and guys showed up. We ran a tab at the soda fountain. So from a practical standpoint, there was sufficient drink, cake, ice cream, and M&M's for all. Teen heaven.

Stephen, Donald and I bowled about 6 lanes down from the party so as not to intervene. The baby divided her time between inadvertently drinking my Diet Pepsi (ack!) instead of her lemonade, and being passed around from one teen girl to another at the birthday party. She preferred the swooning attention of the partygoers to our repeated admonitions about her trying to run down the alley after the ball....