My "baby" is 9 today

It has been brought to my attention by Riley that this year is her "last year in the single digits" and then her dad chimed in with "and she is half way to 18". Are they trying to depress me? I want my baby to shrink back down to three so we can repeat the last six years all over again at a much slower pace.
She has made me feel a bit better by reassuring me that she plans to buy a house as close to our house as possible so she can visit me on the days that she does not work and while she is working I can watch her kids, Jack and Annie. I would love nothing more than to have her close.
So Happy 9th birthday my baby girl. I love you to the moon and back!

A little pre-birthday tea

Today we went to American Girl place in Los Angeles for tea to celebrate Riley's birthday. My mom, sister Kathy, nieces Erica and Presley and Riley's friend Jennifer all came along. The girls had such a GREAT time and so did the adults. We spent hours shopping and eating. Riley got Mimi's hair styled in the salon and she bought a bunch a new outfits for Mimi, several books and the curlique daybed and bedding. Thanks to all her generous relatives giving her cash or gift cards to AG. We did not get home until almost 9 so most of it is still in boxes and we will sort through it all tomorrow. At least Riley will have a motivator for cleaning her room because otherwise Mimi's new bed will just not fit.

Zachary's 12th birthday

He had a kind of low key birthday since half the party guests came down with stomach flu last night, but all in all he seems pleased. He has a load of cash in his wallet and what 12 year old boy does not love cash. He got lots of other nice gifts and is loving playing with his new black DS lite that Scott and I gave him. So now I have one year to prepare for being the mother of a teen. YIKES!

Last night was the March of Dimes awards dinner

I took my mom as my guest since it was her birthday and I wanted to spend the evening with her. It was rather appropriate since the March of Dimes was originally founded to develop the polio vaccine and my mom is a polio survivor. It was a nice evening out and I met a lot of really nice people. One of our friends is the Southern California ambassador family this year and I finally got to meet his wife. Their 3 year old daughter is the ambassador child. Lauren was born 6 weeks early with the cord wrapped tightly around her neck twice. She suffered a brain hemorrhage and all her organs shut down. She was in the NICU for 40 days with many ups and downs. She is doing great now. She has been diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy, but she gets therapy 5 times a week and is thriving. She is a very inspirational little girl.
I ended up being the number 3 top fundraiser (I raised $3,610) and I'm happy to say that we have a new fundraiser in our region who took the #1 spot and raised a whopping $10,000. We have to keep her fundraising for us. The total raised in our region for MOD was $735,000 which was up from $695,000 last year.