Happy Birthday Eliana!

Our Eliana is now a teenager -- she turned 13 in July!

We had a little bit of a hard time finding gifts for her as her interests are less around "stuff".  But here she is on the morning of, with her presents.

One thing she got was a set of essential oils.  She likes essential oils and puts them in her diffuser that she got for Christmas.

Karina got her a pack of Ghiradelli chocolate.  As you can see, the kids' cousins from Denver are still around to help celebrate.

Karina also got her this bar of chocolate from Moonstruck.  It has a pretty design on it.

And she also got this humongous chair.  It was a purchase from Costco that she had been eyeing for quite a while.

Maybe this is part of being a teenager, but she got a bunch of cash this year.  Our wonderful neighbors gave her $20 as a present.

She also got a similar present from Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai, Elvin's parents.

And got more cash from her cousin!

And from Mommy and Daddy....she got a letter saying that from now on, she would get a sum of money, monthly, to be deposited to her account at the start of every month.  It is meant to be her clothing allowance, though she is welcome to spend it on anything she wants and she has access to it with her newly issued ATM card.

She was pretty happy about having control over so much money, and others were a little jealous.

And, in the evening we had an ice cream cake.  She chose a cake from Cold Stone and it was delicious.

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And...as a joke she also got a pineapple for her birthday from her good friends.  They had heard that she has never had pineapple before so got her one.  It was a first for her!

Happy Birthday, Eliana!!!