Rachel is 17!

Somehow—almost impossibly—Rachel turned 17 today. 

She (and Miriam) had a game night with friends last night (so it was like a birthday party but without her having to be the very center of attention, which she doesn't particularly enjoy) and Rachel woke up to a flurry of texts from her FSY friends. 

Later in the morning she and I solidified her schedule for next school year. She'll be doing a full course load at BYU-Idaho and is particularly excited for a sewing class we found—Apparel Construction 1. 

Grandpa brought the kids home around noon. We opened presents soon after they arrived. Phoebe has actually been pretty okay with birthdays this year. I mean, the first few were upsetting, but she's realized that her turn is coming and rather than being upset by the ongoing anticipation she's chosen to be increasingly excited for when it's her day.

When she wandered into my room at midnight—soon after I'd finished wrapping Rachel's presents—she said, "Oooh! Are these presents for me?!"

"No," I said. "They're for Rachel."

"Oh," she said, slumping. "Okay."

She perched right beside Rachel the whole time:

Well, okay...she alternated between perching beside Rachel...and hopping down to choose the next present for her to open:

"Now dis one!" she commanded.

Rachel got exciting things like a dress—with pockets!—and some socks and slips, some books, some black cocoa powder, and a waffle iron with exchangeable holiday plates.

Here's Andrew and Zoë watching the present opening:

After presents we had cake. Miriam was our cake baker and decorator this time around. We threw around a lot of ideas—a "Dancing Queen" cake, for example—with Miriam finally settling on a Taylor Swift cake. Taylor Swift's song "Betty" has the line "I'm only 17, I don't know anything..."

Miriam used letter beads to make the words on the cake because these kinds of bracelets are a common trading item at The Eras Tour concerts (fans were inspired by some lyrics in another song to "make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it"). She made some rustic-textured stripes on the side of the cake in the colours of The Eras Tour poster.

Here's Rachel with her cake:

Here she is trying to fit 17 candles on the cake (it was hard work):

Counting them, just to make sure there were only 17 (and not 18 by accident):

We finally got it all figured out and lit the candles. Phoebe decided she was in charge of turning out the lights because she can reach the light switch in the dining room. She also started us off in singing "Happy Birthday."

After cake (or before?) we played Splendor, a new game Andrew recently picked out (it's really quite fun, though it's only a 4-player game) and Taco-Cat-Goat-Cheese-Pizza (a card game Andrew picked out at Christmas that is a real hoot). Even Phoebe plays Taco-Cat-Goat-Cheese-Pizza with us—she'll sit on the sidelines and then slap her little hand down on the pile when she sees everyone diving for it. So even though she's not really playing she thinks she is and that's good enough for now. 

*****

This was a rather scary age for Rachel to turn, though now that she's done it I think she's feeling pretty okay with it. She was worried about heading into her last year before being an adult, her last year of high school, her last year before leaving the nest, her last year of this and that and the other...

But she's aging gracefully.

So far I don't think 17 has been any different from being 16 for her. Taking that first step was the hardest part. The rest of the year will be a breeze! 

When we asked her what her favourite part of being 16 was over dinner—leftovers, because we're classy...and because Grandpa decided not to stay for dinner...and because Miriam was heading off to a babysitting job (that unleashed a little existential crisis about not wanting to babysit on her birthday because it was her last birthday before she became an adult and she might never have another birthday off in her whole entire life because she'll have to be responsible all the time and...anyway, Miriam ended up taking the babysitting job—she quickly answered that going to Europe was pretty great. 

So shout out to Auntie Josie and Uncle Patrick for making her year!

*****

We'll have her official birthday dinner tomorrow. This year she asked for homemade spaghetti. 

We were lucky enough to get her birthday blackout out of the way in the wee hours of the morning (the power went out around 3:00 am when Andrew was still busy trying to get Phoebe to sleep after her middle-of-the-night waking, where she creepily stormed into our room complaining about seeing a "little guy" downstairs (she always said this while making these claw shapes with her fingers) and it's always a little terrifying when kids do things like that...and then the power went out...and that made her story even more terrifying (either that or we're just scaredy cats)). 

The power did not go out during Rachel's birthday dinner today...but we're not holding our breath for tomorrow. We've been having a lot of power outages the past few days—and a lot of rain as well!