Happy 13th Birthday!!!

On Sunday, we celebrated the girls turning 13 with a fun day! They are officially teenagers!

As always, we started off with presents in the morning. This year, the girls got CELL PHONES!!! Yes, this has been on their wish list forever, but we held off until they were 13. Most of their friends already have phones, so now they feel like they are part of the "club". Ha!

A couple of the things I got them for their birthday didn't fit, so we returned those and did a little shopping. Of course, we had to stop off at Sephora for their free birthday gifts!

We grabbed lunch at Lazy Dog. Here they are on their new phones waiting for our table. :)

We relaxed in the afternoon for a little bit. Avery and I have been binging Gilmore Girls together. Then, we got ready for their birthday dinner out. They picked Gibson's since they had such a great dinner there with Matt when I was out of town. A few pictures before we headed out.

Morgan loves shrimp cocktail!

Avery does not! :) But she loves the bread they bring to the table.

Our waitress brought out a birthday dessert with warm chocolate chip cookies and ice cream.

And we let them take pictures of it for their friends with their new phones - ha! We don't allow Snapchat, but they have an app called Locket that they do with their friends that is similar but geared more towards middle schoolers.

We had a great dinner and are so happy to celebrate this milestone with our favorite girls!

Oh, the guy from The Kitchen on Food Network (and other shows), Jeff Mauro, was having a party with friends in the party room next to our table. I was surprised he would be in Oak Park, but turns out he used to have a deli in Westmont. Small world.

13th Birthday Party

The girls had a few friends over on Saturday night to celebrate their birthday. We grilled out hot dogs and hamburgers, played some games and had s'mores by the fire pit. There was a lot of giggling and screaming, so I think they all had fun! :)

We decorated a little around the house and outside. I bought some lights to put up around the yard. We kind of were going for an iridescent theme, I guess!

We gave the girls their new cell phones for the party so they could take pictures.

Apparently, this Soda Pop song is from K Pop Demon Hunters. They made this fun video!

We played a version of Family Feud with the girls and it was so fun! We split them up into two teams with Avery and Morgan split up.  We had buzzers and streamed the game on the TV. I had set it up with categories that middle schoolers would (hopefully!) like:

• After taking a selfie, what might you do with it?
• Name something you do each night before you go to bed.
• Name an app where you interact with your friends.
• Name something you would see on a GRWM video.
• Name the top streamed Olivia Rodrigo songs to date
• Name the top streamed Taylor Swift songs to date
• Other than LOL, what is a text acronym that you use frequently?
• What does a dog do? 
• What is a word or phrase no one over age 30 should say?
• What’s something you do when you wake up in the morning?

Morgan's team ended up winning by quite a bit. :)

Then, they opened presents. The girls got a lot of nice things from their friends! I think they have Starbucks gift cards to last them a while.

Front row: Lizzie, Maebel, Elise, Abby, Bianca
Back row: Morgan, Rachel, Katherine, Avery & Caroline

After dinner, the girls all made s'mores and sat around the fire pit. Matt got this picture where the smoke from Caroline's marshmallow on fire caught the color from the projector and made it look blue!

They watched about 5 minutes of Mean Girls, but weren't really into the movie. They ended up playing hide-n-seek in the house with their cell phones. Like they would hide and then text each other pictures or clues where they were. They played this for a while!

Then, they all grabbed handfuls of glow sticks and went in the basement for a glow-stick party!

They made this fun video with the glow sticks!

After their friends left, the girls crashed! Last night of being 12!

Birthday Mani/Pedi

The girls and I went for mani/pedis to prep for their birthday. Last day of being 12!

Basketball Shootout

On Saturday morning, Morgan played in a shootout with Team MC. The first team they played had beat them 54-14 last time they met in August. This game went much better! They ended up winning 40-34. It was a really good game. Morgan's team played really well together! The second game was tougher. They played well again. But, they only had 7 players and one got hurt and then Morgan fouled out. So, the last 8 minutes of the game were tough. We didn't realize Morgan had 4 fouls, so it was kind of a surprise when she fouled out. She and another girl were both #30 on our team and we're not sure if they were assigning the fouls to the correct #30 throughout the game. So, that was a bummer. Her team ended up losing 21-26.

Boxing out!

She got to shoot a lot of free throws!

Herrick Hangout

The girls went to their first middle school event on Friday after school. They had a party with a DJ, pizza and dirty sodas. The girls had fun hanging out with their friends!

Soccer game

Morgan's soccer team played on Tuesday night. They had beat this team 4-1 the last time we played them, but tonight it just wasn't in the cards. They lost 4-2 (but the NPL website is showing they tied 3-3 which we know is not correct.) They have some stretches where they play really well, and then some where they just can't get it together. Avery captured a few pictures for me.

 

Dance Team Photos

Avery had a photoshoot in September for her dance team and we got the pictures back. I think they turned out great!