Happy 19th Birthday, Steve!

Today Steve is 19! It's funny to see, that as the kids get older, they still enjoy the old traditions. When the kids were tiny, Monique began their birthday by waking them up early in the morning, singing Happy Birthday and opening presents (her take on it is, it's your birthday the entire day - why wait?! She thinks everyone in Holland does this, too). Yesterday evening, we took Steve (and his friend Jon) out to dinner for his birthday. We went to a Mexican restaurant - Mazatlan. Again this is a tradition of Steve's. When I asked the other day where he wanted to go for dinner, his reply was, "Mazatalan! That's where I always go for my birthday"! Later he was going to watch a movie at Jon's, but was definitely going to be home so we could wake him up this morning! Now seriously, what 19 year old would really want the family to wake him up at 5:00 am singing to him?! And of course, we couldn't disappoint him.




We did birthday cake last night too (the kids will be leaving this afternoon to spend the weekend with their dad). It's amazing how bright a cake can be with only 19 candles! What is even more amazing, is how smoky it can be when the 19 candles are blown out! I hate to think how much smoke there is when there are 40 + candles to be blown out (maybe that is why we don't have any of those pictures).