::emma's 12th birthday party::

For those of you that don't know my oldest is my stepdaughter.  Over the years and through trial and error me have developed a VERY peaceful relationship with her mother.  We all just share and shut up.  (How that all came to be is a post for a different day.)  The point is that holiday's with Emma are always hard for me.  I want to plan six months ahead like I do with my kids.  I want to make a spread sheet and start a file and go totally off the deep end.  But I am not the boss of Emma's birthday parties.  And that's OK.  


Jenni (Josh's ex-wife) does things differently than me.  She plans it all out a week or so before and is much more relaxed than me about the whole deal.  She is better than me about letting Emma really do the planning and she goes with her idea.  

Jenni and Emma live in a very cute little small town near us.  (Same school system, thank God!) They set up a scavenger hunt around the town for Emma's party.  Things on the list were a used birthday candle, today's newspaper, clothespin, and a crayon.  It was much longer than that but those are the few that stick out.  The list was very clever and cute.  I was so impressed.  An adult or two went with each group.  My group decided that we were going to RUN the whole time.  I was so tired by the end of that one hour but we did manage to win.  Jenni gave out one dollar bills as the prize.  The 12 year old crowd loved it.  I was nervous that people would be annoyed at these kids knocking on their doors. They didn't know about this ahead of time.  But they were so gracious to us.  It reminded me about the glory of a small town.   

As Emma gets older it gets harder to decide what to make for her cake but all she wanted was the rainbow cake I made last month.  How fun it was to make it again.  I thought it might be too baby-ish but the preteens thought it was amazing.  "Wow!  Were did you buy this!"  "Brooke, how did you make this?"  "This is amazing."   It was nice to hear because you know a gaggle of tweens are not going to worry about petting my ego just to be nice.  

When I handed Emma her piece of cake she said, "This looks so good I could cram my face in it."  And then she did.  I thought it was so funny that I couldn't stop laughing.  Sometimes that kids humor really surprises me.  

We gave Emma a digital picture frame to keep in her room at Jenni's.   I even loaded it up with some pictures already.     I think she really liked it.  She was texting me all week for hints and I ket telling her stuff like "it doesn't have feathers"  "it is not a tree"  "you don't have to feed it".  She was playfully frustrated with me.