I can hardly believe it - my "baby" turned 12 years old yesterday!!
Even though yesterday was her official birthday, we had more of a weekend-long celebration. On Saturday, we went shopping for her birthday gifts. This is usually a very painful experience since she has so much trouble making up her mind! But her brilliant mother (me) set a time limit of 2 hours (actually, we had to be at my niece Rebecca's 6th birthday party at Simply-Cook-It). We whipped through JC Penny's and Justice for Girls, and came away with 2 huge bags of clothes (a 12 year old dream come true!), with time and money to spare!!
On Sunday, we had her special birthday dinner - what we like to call our "munchie dinner" - all appetizers for dinner!! Not the healthiest meal we've ever had, but a whole lot of fun!!
And yesterday we finally had birthday cake. Les came home early from work, we had dinner, then sang "Happy Birthday". It was sort of anti-climactic since we did all the other things over the weekend, but fun none the less. The best part was that she couldn't blow out the candle!! It seriously took about 10 tries before she finally was able to blow it out!! 
You can't really tell from this picture, but she also had her braces put on this week. After a couple of very uncomfortable days, she's doing great!!
Happy Birthday Mikaela!!
