much love and many celebrations

I sure do love our daughter, Laura. She has blessed our lives in so many ways! She is sweet and funny and kind and caring and compassionate. She is beautiful. She is truly a child of God. Her birthday was on Thursday and she began her celebration during the day. She is working on her master's in education and she has spent many hours in a classroom with cute kids this fall. They all made cards for her. So cute! Then we all met for dinner at the Cheesecake factory. I picked up Grandmother (Mark's mom) after work and we met Laura and Mark and Anna (Laura's good friend) at the Cheesecake Factory. We had a delicious dinner. Then we drove back to Grandmother's house and celebrated with cake.

Let me tell you about the cake. We have a wonderful bakery here in town. The name of the bakery is Pastry Art. They make these wonderful little bite size cakes called appropriately "baby bites." You can order a whole cake if you order three weeks in advance and that is the cake that Laura requested . . . .yummy - best cake you will ever put in your mouth. This is the caramel cake with caramel icing. Delish!! Here is their website: http://www.pastryartcakes.com/
After cake at Grandmother's house, we drove home and Laura opened her presents from Mark and me.

Her favorite and most-wanted gift was this watch. I had no idea that over-sized watches are in style. Guess that comes from being middle-aged perhaps?

The celebrations didn't end there. On Friday night, Laura went to the birthday party for one of her sorority sisters from Auburn. Then on Saturday night, she had dinner at Jackson's with close friends.

On Sunday, we celebrated her birthday at Grandmother's house. Grandmother celebrates all birthdays on Sunday. This is the first year ever when Laura has had her birthday all to herself. Glenn is living in Mobile and is coming home tonight. Back to Grandmother's house - she always buys cute birthday napkins!!

We had a delicious lunch after church (which we are privileged to do every Sunday!). Laura had requested birthday apple pie rather than birthday cake. So Grandmother made a beautiful homemade apple pie.

At this birthday celebration, Laura received lots of new Vera Bradley. When she graduated from high school, she had a Vera Bradley graduation (received tons and has used it almost every week since!!) She has worn out those duffel bags and diddy bags and make up bags and her pattern has been retired . . .so she picked out a new pattern - purple punch. She received the large duffel bag, a hanging organizer, a lanyard (from her friend, Joni) for her teacher ID and a couple of other pieces. She was a happy girl (or I should say, young woman!!).

I'm hoping that she doesn't read my blog because she might kill me for posting this but during this Thanksgiving week, I am so very thankful for Laura - so very thankful for the work God has done, is doing and will continue to do in her.