Happy Birthday Tashena!

My family is extremely close.  There are only eight of us and we all live near each other (I live the farthest away).  My niece and nephew are a very special part of our family and we love them so much!  When either one of them has a birthday, it is cause for celebration!  Tashena's 14th birthday was actually last Tuesday but we celebrated it yesterday.

Tashena chose spaghetti for her birthday dinner and then we had this amazing ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins (a birthday tradition).

Then she opened her presents.  Every time I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she would always tell me socks.  She even showed me the specific socks she wanted:  Nike Elite Crew socks!  They are pretty expensive and I couldn't find them anywhere!  One night I went to five different stores!  I could find other Nike socks but not the specific ones she wanted.  I was quite frustrated but I decided to try a few stores after school on Friday and I found some at Famous Footwear!  Even better, they were on clearance and they had a buy one get one half price sale on all socks.  I bought every single pair they had.  The expression on her face when she opened the box made the entire hassle worth it!  Do you remember wanting some super trendy thing when you were a teenager?

My Mom and Dad got her some movies.  She made a list for us and we had a hard time finding these as well!  You would think that all of the stores would have lots of copies of a popular movie like Divergent.  Nope!  We were actually able to find all three that she wanted Friday night!

Her parents gave her a purple (her favorite color) iPod nano and Marilyn gave her an iTunes gift card.  She was absolutely thrilled and began downloading music immediately!

Sean used his own money to buy her some nail polish.  We all thought that was adorable.  After presents, her one request was that we play a game called shanghai rummy.  This is a crazy card game that takes several hours to play and it is kill or be killed!  We love it and play it on every holiday!  My brother in law won.  It was a really fun day but I can't believe that Tashena is 14!