Benjamin's 13!

Benjamin celebrated his birthday at camp this year—along with two other boys. Their camp leaders threw a little party for the three of them, complete with cake and candles. The highlight of Benjamin's time at camp was canoeing on the lake. He's also proud of the fact that they put four kids in a ten-man tent and stuffed ten kids on a two-man canoe—getting all into the stats side of thing. 

He was a little bummed that he missed the last swim meet (especially since Zoë did so well and he didn't get any ribbons at Fun Friday...because...well...he didn't swim), but he's excited that he gets to try swimming an IM at this coming meet (that's and "individual medley," where he'll swim butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle).

We opened presents after Fun Friday (so Benjamin is in his swimming suit). Phoebe wanted to have the best seat in the house right beside the birthday boy. And is she still in her pyjamas? Why, yes, she is! 

I've had a lot of meetings the past couple of weeks, including one that ran a little long on Friday. I was planning on meeting the kids at the pool after Fun Friday and had promised to take Phoebe with me...so never got her out of her pyjamas since we'd be getting into swim suits. But then my meeting trickled into the afternoon and...we still went to the pool. It just...was a bit later than we expected and meant that Phoebe stayed in her pyjamas until mid-afternoon.

Anyway, here's Benjamin opening his gifts:

He was very excited about this LEGO set that Andrew picked out for him:

And here he is with a bison puzzle Auntie K sent:

He laughed about this wrapping job that Andrew did. I was wrapping presents upstairs after my meeting and Andrew came to see how I was doing and I...was actually just sighing to myself because I had one more gift to wrap and only a strip of paper left. I didn't want to go hunt for more paper in the basement because I still wasn't feeling well and I wanted to get to the pool (it's an outdoor pool and I stay away from others as much as I can) and it was all just so overwhelming.

Andrew was like, "Let's just use this as a band around the present and call it artistic."

He didn't want to go hunt for more wrapping paper, either.

This, I believe, was his bug display kit—with pins and boxes and all sorts of things to artistically showcase his bug collection. So it was very fitting that this box should be artistically wrapped.

And then there are the little things that I forgot to pull out when I was getting all his gifts from hiding. Some sinky shark toys that I meant to give him for his birthday like four years ago (still fun). A pair of flip flops that if he doesn't use this year will be far too small for him next year. Things just keep materializing.

Rachel made him a cake with a log raft on it. He asked for a canoe but she didn't want to make fondant...thus the raft. He was happy with that. It's got a cute little waterfall. We took the cake up to Grandpa and Darla's on Saturday afternoon where some of us played pickleball and some of us swam before a storm rolled in and chased us back to the house. We grilled some burgers for dinner and then sang to Benjamin. GG (great-grandma) Marion came by to wish him happy birthday as well, so we had a good crowd!

We have three teenagers in the house now (well, not right right now because two of the teens are actually in the UK at the present...but we have three teenagers in general). I think that's the maximum number of teenagers we'll ever have at one point...and that's probably a fine number of teenagers to manage...

Benjamin is really quite an awesome young man! He led us in a wonderful discussion on prayer in FHE tonight, has been doing some extra chores in his sisters' absence, is doing a wonderful job with the little junior barracudas, is a great big brother. He's come a long way in thirteen years... 

...and still has some pretty epic hair.