Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my 14th birthday!!
Dad always puts up signs whenever there's a birthday for one of the children. He tries to make the things on the sign have the person's age in them, and make them about things that the child really likes.

Here are some of my birthday signs.

I really love horses, so for my dessert tomorrow -when we celebrate- for dessert we are going to have cupcakes with little horse models on top (not edible).

Tomorrow we are also going to watch the 1935 "A Midsummer Night's Dream!

A couple days ago I got my third follower. Just in time for my birthday! How nice!

When we go out shopping, I always look for dropped money on the ground.

We are going to have spaghetti for dinner tonight, and then have the real celebration tomorrow, when Mara will be home.

We went out shopping yesterday and Mom bought me two helium balloons.

I named them. The purple one is Benedick, and the pink one is Beatrice, from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

My balloon weight. Mom said the lady filling them with helium
picked out the nicest one. 

Fresh Orange Juice

Mom, Helena, Benedick, and me went to Grammy's house awhile back, and while we were there we picked a whole bunch of oranges off her trees. We juiced a lot of them today.

Doesn't it look delicious?

The Battle of the Hangers

as Written from the Front by your War Correspondent

Helena was hanging up laundry a few days ago, and we were playing keep-away with a skirt hanger and wouldn't let her get it. She had one skirt already on a hanger, then she went out of the room, and Benedick hid the hanger we were playing with. Then Helena came back down the hall, saw that her hanger was missing and went mewing to Mom and Dad (note: in our house mewing usually means longing or sadness). While she was gone, Mara quickly went over to the skirt already on a hanger, removed the hanger and hid it.

When Helena came back and demanded the hanger Benedick had hidden, Mara said, "which hanger?" Eventually, Helena noticed that the skirt was off the other hanger, and she went down the hall into Benedick's room, and came out with one of his Nerf dart guns (Benedick has zillions), pointed it at point-blank range, and asked, "Where are they?!" He wouldn't say, and went and got another dart gun. 

As you might expect, a furious combat ensued. There were darts flying everywhere, but Helena was still trying to find the hangers with "warmer" and "colder" hints from Mara. More dart guns kept appearing as the combatants would occasionally retire momentarily to Benedick's room for more guns. Once I found that Helena had taken refuge behind the couch I was sitting on. The line of fire moved so as to accommodate her new position. When the darts started coming too close for comfort, with one actually hitting an innocent bystander (me), I removed myself to a safer location.

Soon after, the active fighting ceased, and Helena could devote all her attention to locating the missing hangers. Even after searching constantly for several minutes, she couldn't find them, and she went to get more hangers. But while Helena was getting them, somehow the original ones appeared out of nowhere (with a little help). Then when Helena returned with new hangers and found the old ones laying on the couch, she went to put away the hangers she had just gotten out. But when Helena came back, the old hangers had disappeared again. This time she was able to trace them to behind a couch cushion. 

Note: the pictures were posed after the fact, but the second one is quite accurate to their positions at some point during the battle.
Second note: guns supplied by Benedick & Co.; quite willingly to himself, and through no fault of his own (except leaving his room vulnerable) to Helena.