Our Lauren is NINE!

I really can't believe that our firstborn has been in this world for nine years now. Every cliche' regarding time certainly birthed itself in the truth.

We cut our time short at the Midwest Homeschool Convention in order to come home and celebrate Lauren's birthday on Saturday. (see our other blog for Derek's report of the convention.)

There are so many things that I could share about Lauren. She has been the greatest joy and beauty since the day she arrived. How vividly I remember holding her for the first time and drinking in her sweet newborn smell. And staring at her in amazement that this infinitely beautiful creation was my flesh and bone. Lauren is smart, creative, compassionate, sensitive, and ever so imaginitive. Her Daddy's pet name for her is "Brains." Everyone who meets her loves her.

The deepest longing of my heart is that her spirit will always remain tender towards the things of God, and that she will grasp early on the value of living a life of purity and godliness.

Here are a few pics from her family birthday celebration. She really gets into it, as you can tell! BTW, special SPECIAL thanks to my sis, Keri, for baking Lauren's birthday cake with her on Saturday. This was our first non-bakery birthday cake. (we have a bakery that does an AMAZING job with character cakes, so we've always used them.) Since Lauren is SO grown-up now, she didn't want a character cake. She saw a picture of this rainbow/sky cake in an American Girl magazine months ago, and saved it. I think Keri did a fantastic job of pulling it off. Thanks!

UPDATE: I'm very bitter because I wanted to post a picture of the cake when you cut it open. Apparently it's on another memory card. So I will have to look for it and get it posted later. The idea is that the outside looks like a blue sky with clouds; when you cut out a piece, you see four layers of "rainbow" colors. It's very cute. I'll post it as soon as I can!