18 and grown?

At least Beth thinks she's grown. She's also tattooed, thankyouverymuch! It's in the middle of her upper back, between her should blades. Since it's covered by a t-shirt, I paid half as her present. Tattoos are expensive, by the way. The little gem featured below on my daughter's back was $120. And cost her two weeks of swimming. And, as I kept reminding her before the deed, will let 18 babies die. (To explain, Beth has always - well, in the 4 years I've known her, had a serious fear of needles. When she turned 17 last year, I kept saying, "Hey, you can give blood now!" She laughed it off until she came home from school on their blood drive day wearing a sticker that said Kiss me, I gave blood today! I asked how in the world they convinced her to give and she said they told her that every pint of blood helped save 3 people. She said she just pictured Elvis as a tiny baby being saved by someone else's donation and decided she needed to save some babies, too. That's my Beth - such a sweetheart!) Of course, now she's 18 and tattooed and can't donate blood for a year.

We had a good day. She'd requested a banana pudding so we had it for breakfast. Boy Wonder's mom, sister, and nephew came over to swim. His sister and nephew stayed into the afternoon and we had a good time with the Wii and a computer game. I kind of enjoyed having them around! They left as my family started arriving.

We had a joint party for the June birthdays in our family tonight. Both Beth and my brother had birthdays today. Alli's was last week. My aunt's is Thursday. We swam and cooked out. My mom did most of the food. All I made was macaroni salad. It was a nice evening for me. An aunt, uncle, cousin and the cousin's daughter came, too. They live here in town but we rarely get together. We need to do this more often. None of us are getting any younger...ask my brother who turned 43 today - LOL! Ask my mom who gave birth to him 43 years ago.

Tomorrow, it's back to the real world. Alli has to get blood drawn in the morning and then go back to the OB in the afternoon. She miscarried the baby Sunday night (Blair's due date) but they still want to see her and make sure all is well. I have no real plans for Wednesday. I'm hoping for a calm, peaceful day at home. I'm sure someone will come up with a plan to keep that from happening but that is my plan for now!