My birthday girl

Fifteen years ago last Thursday, my world was rocked by the birth of my seventh child and third girl, Mary Susannah.  When she was born, my first two girls were ages 21 and 18, already married and mothers of children of their own.  There were four boys wild and woolly boys in between, and I was looking forward to having dolls, dishes and pretty long hair to care for again.

When my first two girls were growing up, in fact, up to my fifth child, during whose pregnancy God saved my soul, I was an immature, selfish mother, to say the least.  I loved my children fiercely, having a large family of children has always been my dream, but at the same time, I had swallowed the world's teachings of how to live, which meant I should have lots of "me" time and follow my own selfish interests.  And so I did, and at times I believe my first several children suffered from that.

But the Lord saved me during my pregnancy with my son Spencer, who is now 20 years old, and my life changed dramatically, praise the Lord.  Lots of people thought I had lost my mind, but what I had done was lost my worldly mindset, and Jesus changed my thinking, and I was a "new (wo)man!"

Fast forward a few years later, and I was blessed with another daughter, and I was just thrilled.  I determined she would be my constant companion.  That if I was invited somewhere where children weren't, I just wouldn't go.  And mostly that's what I did.  She went where I went.  We were together ALL THE TIME.  I was so careful what influenced her.  And it has all paid off.  I have a beautiful, mature, grown up acting daughter who never gives me a minute trouble.  She has taken over the kitchen, doing the lion's share of the cooking and all the dishes.  She cleans when she sees a need, not when I tell her too.  She has taken her little sister under her wing (most of the time) to teach her how to be a lady, too.

And lately, she's had the biggest trial of her life with a terrible virus in her eye.  We've been to the doctor every week for two months now, and they just can't seem to heal this up.  So far, they say, it's not sight threatening, but this latest visit told us that the infection has gone deeper, and now it has the potential to become that way.  However, the surface has healed enough that she can use steroids again, which helps with the inflammation and makes her a LOT more comfortable!

So what did my big girl want to do on her birthday?  She wanted to take her birthday money and go thrift store shopping and go to Starbucks, so that's what we did in the early part of the day.  Then we ran Angel-Leah over to piano lessons, where Mary Susannah used her birthday present, the very expensive camera her daddy spoiled her and bought for her, and took some pictures:

Here's Angel-Leah drinking her passion flower tea from Starbucks.  I added this one so you could all see my masterpiece - the sweater I crocheted for her, which took many hours!  It's a bit big still, but she had it in time for Gage's graduation from law school in Virginia last May, and this is the first time we brought it out this year!

We got a cake from Central Market because they don't have dyes in them, but also because they are just amazingly good.  But no dyes means there's not much color to them, so we stopped off at the store and bought pretty flowers with glitter on them, and Mary Susannah did a pretty good job decorating her own birthday cake!

Once daddy was home, we headed off to Babe's Fried Chicken, which sounds like a hole in the wall, but was actually an amazingly good place to eat, and fun, too.
Waiting for a seat, I was sat on:

...which is not unusual...

Mary Susannah let me take this picture.  It's a perfect example of what we have seen for the last two months, because her eye is VERY sensitive to light, and she keeps her hand over it most of the time:

We ate until we were almost sick, then came home to eat again - birthday cake this time!

I wouldn't do this blog justice without adding a picture of handsome Beau, who doesn't care how the cake is decorated, as long as it's good, and there's lots of it!

So happy birthday, Mary Susannah.  It's been a joy watching you grow up, but this birthday makes me very sad, because each year draws the time of us being constant companions closer to an end.

However, I have loved my relationship with my grown girls almost, and maybe even more, as their growing up years, so I am counting on the closeness and fun times continuing throughout our lives!