Happy Birthday, Miss Abuela!

Jessica turned 14 a few weeks back and we celebrated it in the most mild, laid back, ghetto way possible.  
Truly, I don't think any kid (of mine) has had a birthday celebration that was more lame than this one.

Like...we are talking "new level of lameness" here.

Because of COVID , we could not have a party with friends, so I made a plan for us to drive out to waterton and have a weiner roast/board game night in one of the kitchens. 

For some weird reason though, EVERY camp kitchen was being used. Every.single.one!

Why are so many people using the park in the winter now? (It used to be the case that we'd go out there and feel entirely alone, but suddenly it is like Grand Central Station all of the time!). Anyways - we spent about 40 minutes (no joke) looking for a place to have our Birthday Weiner Roast, and finally we just pulled over on the side of the road and cooked them up by the ditch.  The Chief Mountain Border is still closed, so luckily we did have this road mostly to ourselves, but seriously, eating out of our van was not the "birthday adventure" that I'd pitched to the family.

Jessica is always so thoughtful and is constantly thinking of things to bake for other people, I was determined to bake her the BEST Birthday cake EVER! 

Luckily, she happily settled for a frozen cake from DQ.

(I sent the boys to get the cake and they made sure that their pet name for her "Miss Abuela" made it onto the cake.  (Nice touch boys.)

She got the game "Throw, Throw Burrito" as a gift and we all set in immediately to play a round her two. Darn it all if it wasn't the Birthday Girl who got the bloody nose.  Just one more thing to make her birthday a little less awesome than birthdays past.

By the end of the day, I was feeling like we'd kinda missed out on our chance to really make this girl's day a special one, but then...

...I got a text from a local breeder letting me know of the safe arrival of a new litter of puppies.  Can you believe that? It's like the universe was trying to tell us that "now was the time." 

So, in a most effortless way, I announced that we had one more birthday present for her, and with that, we all settled around the computer to select who would be the newest member of our family:

 And just like that - BEST Birthday EVER!

Update:

Since Jessica's Birthday, we've gotten a few more pictures of our little pup. (We technically don't get him until April 16th and it is driving me crazy!). We are in love!!!

(3 weeks old)

(4 weeks)