Ella's Birthday

Yesterday our oldest turned 15!  It was a busy weekend with our church suddenly deciding to pursue in-person worship services again, so we had to get a little creative in our celebrating!  Good thing our oldest is super chill and said all she wanted for this strange birthday was a couple hours at the newly reopened coffee shop to visit with her friends outside while treating them all to their favorite drinks.  So, we made that happen!

We celebrated all weekend, with a Support Small Businesses kinda theme! :)  Above, yummy Mexican food on the patio, below presents from our town's cute little home goods store.

 Ella also received generous and perfect presents from her far away family too!  Thank you!

Back in February, Ella had said, "All I want for my birthday is to see Hamilton!" She was very cool about that not happening, but we tried to surprise her with some fun Hamilton stuff still!  This is what I was most excited about.  Our good church friend, Katie, makes THE most incredible custom cookies.  She did a set of Hamilton cookies for Ella.  Aren't they fantastic?  Katie is also Ella's small group leader and Ella babysits her kids.  It was fun to swing Ella over to her house and have her open these cookie works of art in front of their creator.

Ella's actual birthday had 3 church services in it so we didn't do much besides lead (Dave) and serve (me) at those.  She was cute to be excited that "getting to go to REAL church" was her big birthday activity.  Sweet church friends showed up on our doorstop before the first service to gift Ella this giant birthday donut, knowing what a busy day it would be for our family.

 It was a low key kind of birthday, with plans changing a few different times, but I think 15 might actually be a birthday Ella will always remember because the little things (Time with friends! Dinner OUT at a restaurant!  Church with people!  Kindness of church family making disappointments fun!) were actually huge gifts.