Yesterday was my middle son’s birthday. Ambrose is now officially a teenager. So of course, his 13th birthday party had to be a big one.

It’s kinda funny, actually, about Ambrose’s birthday. Because it’s at the end of summer, he never gets to celebrate at school, and a lot of people are on vacation when he has his party. Last year, though, we were only a week away from moving cross-country, so our extended family ended up having several huge parties for us, all of which had some element of birthday-for-Ambrose to them. Over our almost-year in Massachusetts, both Morrigan and Laurence had birthdays sans extended family, and now we’re home just in time to host everyone for Ambrose’s birthday again. Ha!

Since everyone wanted to welcome us to the new house and get house tours and stuff, we had a lot more people than usual over: grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts, aunts and uncles, cousins and second-cousins…you know. There were also LOTS and LOTS of presents. (Mostly because we bought Ambrose about two dozen beanie babies from the thrift store, with the intention of putting them in the pinata, except the pinata was too small, so we wrapped them individually so that he’d have TONS to open for his 13th. He got a kick out of it.) Pics:

before the party – birthday prince and his dozens of (Christmas-wrapped) beanies

        

The party was “hobbit-themed,” which meant 1) the games were all related to Tolkien (including “Galadriel’s mirror,” where the kids fished fortunes out of a bowl of lentils with a pair of Pocky Sticks, and “Orc camp,” where everyone was assigned an Orc name and had to try to “kill” each other throughout the party); 2) the cake said, “Ah elbirthday gilthoniel” (I don’t get it, but I’ve never read Tolkien); and 3) the pinata was a pony labeled “Fatty Lumpkin.” Heh.

It was a quite enjoyable afternoon, topped off by an evening dinner at Olive Garden. And we now have two teenagers in the family.