My oldest child turned twelve back at the end of March, and believe me, those mombloggers instincts were firing. I've let go of the notion of the annual birthday letter, not because I don't want to celebrate and embrace every new year, no. First of all, I never did do an annual one. It was like every few years, I think.

Anyway, I don't make the time to write as frequently as I'd like to these days, and Ye Olde Byrthedae post got waylaid. Until now.

The most important thing you should know about this particular twelfth birthday is that I put my daughter on a Zamboni ride that lasted for 10 minutes. Look at her joy:

Of course, before she spent 10 minutes clutching the big yellow beast and sucking exhaust, we tried to get her psyched to wave at us while riding around the ice:

"Do it like this!" we shouted as she cruised by in the background. But no. We laughed ourselves sick.

When she finally got down off of the monstrosity, we captured her gratefulness at getting such a unique experience on her special day:

Yes, she was delighted as all get out. (I can't believe we talked her into it. Hah!)

We had invited a bunch of her girlfriends from both the elementary school and the middle school, and we had a nice turnout of kids, considering it was spring break and we waited until last minute. We being me, that is.

That wasn't the "crazy shot" - that was pretty much the best I could do to get the group to be in the same frame, let alone not squealing or leaping around or talking super loudly over the top of one another. My decision to not host slumber parties remains a genius idea.

So, they skated around:

And then they figured out they could stand around in a herd in the middle of the ice and just chat, so they did a lot of that. The skate guards would periodically move them along. Meanwhile, my youngest was wearing this adorable outfit. I'd like to blame her, but I put her in the pants and grabbed the jacket and didn't think about it much until we got there.

Look at my baby:

Aw, she's so OLD. Man. I birthed that girl 12 years and two months ago, and I've never been the same since.