Graduation and my "last" birthday

So as promised, here are some pics of Cyndel Marie's graduation: Three sisters--how lucky am I to have 2 little sisters? They were the last 2 so I was almost stuck with only 2 brothers.

Cyndel and friends (Jarom and Ariel)

Cynnie with my parents

And Cyndel with stoned Robbie. No not really stoned, just weird in pictures :p

So, isn't she the cutest thing ever? I adore my Cyndel. She is super photogenic too--I'm jealous, maybe someday I'll give up the stupid cheese face and pull some of hers. Cyndel's graduation was nice, 650 in the graduating class made it pretty long but still pleasant. And it was a milestone for a darling girl who very nearly did not make it to her first birthday. Cyndel was a pretty average newborn, a little extra sleepy perhaps and with brown hair which set her apart from the rest of our fam but nothing to be startled by. When she was a couple of months old my mom found her not breathing. She gave her CPR and took her to the hospital for all sorts of tests but they found nothing wrong with her. They told her she was just paranoid (hello, my child wasn't breathing, this is way beyond paranoid!). This continued to happen, she would go to sleep and stop breathing, I was 11 at the time and remember seeing the ambulance coming for her--me watching from the playground at school. Still nothing was found. Mother's Intuition is a powerful and amazing tool--my mom knew something was wrong and continued fighting even when they basically told her she was crazy. Finally she went above everyone's head and took Cyndel to the Children's Hospital an hour away. One chest X-ray was all it took to find the cardiovascular ring that was suffocating her from the inside when she rested. They got her into surgery immediately and she has nothing but a scar to show for it now. The surgery was early December, they told us we would have had her funeral by Christmas. So for my darling lil' sis, every milestone will always be special because we almost didn't get to keep her. And here's something weird for ya, after the surgery the brown hair all fell out and grew in blond. Creepy, no?

So, my "last" birthday went well. I say last because I turned 29 yesterday and don't intend to get any older than that! Next year will just have to be 29, take 2. I woke up to Carter singing the happy birthday to Mommy song over and over again. What a silly little boy--Lowell had only mentioned it to him once. What a sweet way to start the day. We went to play at the Children's garden, and hooray--they added UV filters to the little wading pool and it is now up and running again. I love when you take something I already love and make it that much better. The kids loved it! We then got a slightly extravagant lunch (Panda Express with shrimp, yum!) and took a long nap. Believe it or not, the kids asked to be put to bed and went down for nap without a fuss. I seriously could hardly believe it. I can't imagine the novelty of the new bed will last long, but we will soak it up while it does. My one hope with the loft bed was that they (like me) wouldn't want to go up and down and up and down and so would stay up--so far so good! :) Lowell was running around getting the car fixed, hooray for a handy hubby. He did the brakes by himself, I am so impressed. We still needed new rotors too, but some big bucks saved by his ingenuity. P.S. We hate Les Schwab, go to Big O if you don't want lazy people to lie to you (i.e. tell you your brakes are fine when they are NOT to get out of the life time warranty). When I woke up, these had been delivered:

What a wonderful hubby I have! They smell SO good. He kept the kids quiet so I could have a long nap too and then took me to, you'll never guess . . .the gardens again. Yep, I love it. We cruised in the golf cart Hillary borrowed for us and Carter was thrilled to find his new friend, "Caterpillar". Any bets on his life expectancy? Then Lowell and I were joined by my bro Robbie and his friends for dinner at Tucanos. I think I am still full. But hey, free birthday dinner followed by free birthday ice cream at Coldstone. Gotta love registering online for free stuff, I still have Baskin Robbins and Red Robin items to redeem as well.

So a delightful day with delightful company. I also had a thousand birthday wishes on facebook, so fun to have people that care. I had a b-day once where no one remembered, facebook would have saved that day. Thanks everyone, I love you!

P.S. I thought I would add Cyndel's graduation announcement because she's gorgeous, and I made them. Here you go: