Birthday!

Last Thursday Eva turned 14!  Now she can go to dances--except our Bishopric ran out of dance cards :(

It's hard to believe that in a year she'll start driving!  Seriously I can't wait.  I'm looking forward to another chauffer :)

We are so proud of Eva--she's a remarkable girl!  I'm going to brag about her a bit :)  She works so hard to develop her talents, be a good friend, help her siblings, etc.  She is an accomplished musician--she gets to start playing Beethoven's Pathetique (a piece I learned in high school) and she's working on her Suzuki book 6 in violin.  She loves working with the yearbook committee and participating in young women's.  She's nearly finished with her first personal progress medallion.  She has a beautiful testimony of our Savior and His place in her life and finds joy in reading about Him in her scriptures.  We sure love having Eva in our family!!

For Eva's birthday she got an i-home, a new SD card for her camera and......her own room!  We spent the weekend moving Vince's stuff into the room that will one day be a bathroom, Eva's stuff into Vince's old space, Ivy's stuff upstairs to the boys' old room and the boys downstairs to the girls' old room (yes, the one with the pink carpet--and Ethan is NOT thrilled about pink carpet :))  I'm hoping all this moving explains the late birthday blog :)

It's amazing how clean everyone's bedroom is.  Everyone's!  The boys really did need tons more space.  Eva and Ivy each claimed that it was the other one making the mess in their room.  I guess they were both right?!  Maybe it's too early to tell.

In other news--a week before Eva's birthday Vince's truck broke on the way home from work.  His front passenger tire was sideways.  We felt super blessed that going 75 mph on a busy highway during the commute, when people drive to close, that no one bumped him and he was able to get off the road without rolling.  He left a long indentation in the highway and apparently there were many sparks.  After a tow, 2 new tires, 4 new ball joints, and some controller thing under the car that was damaged we have his truck back.  BUT while we were waiting for that work to be done the Expedition broke down--right before the weekend.  So we were a small one-car family for a weekend.  The Expedition sounded Really Bad and we were thinking it might be time to say good bye or replace the transmission but our wonderful new neighbor looked at it and said it needs a new CV joint which is really not a big deal :)  We were thinking Vince would fix it but after looking at his schedule and taking into account that he's not very comfortable with that plan we took the key to the mechanic and are now waiting for that vehicle to be towed.  Thank goodness we had our super old 1993 Subaru to tie us over!  The irony of that was not lost on me but when I pointed it out to Vince he muttered something about that one being sure to break down now.  It was a bit of a stressful weekend around here....