Rachel's Birthday

Rachel turned 18 years old today. I just can't believe it. EIGHTEEN YEARS since I held my first little baby girl in my arms. Eighteen years since Mike almost passed out on a gurney for the second time. Eighteen years since my mom & I cried in the delivery room when we saw how much she looked like Matt. I know how cliche it sounds, but to my friends with babies and toddlers...when you reach this day you will really wonder how it can be that the time passed through your fingers so quickly.

Rachel has been saving for a very long time for a laptop. As you can imagine, when you have 6 people in a household, and every one of them likes to use the computer, the competition can get pretty fierce. For a long time we have known it would be a help to Rachel to have her own computer so that she didn't always have to wait for someone to get off of the computer so that she could start a paper for school.

So she saved and saved and saved. Every week when she babysat for our community group at church she would faithfully set aside her pay toward a laptop. She often set herself back, though, because she would not let a friend's birthday pass by without giving a gift, or Christmas without buying something for her brothers & sisters. She made lots of progress, but seemed to be discouraged that she was reaching her goal so slowly.

Well, Rachel's birthday present was a laptop. She is a very, very, very happy girl. I suppose now I should say young woman, rather than girl. If it sounds like I am using this post to "toot Rachel's horn", I guess that is true. I can't help it. I'm her Mama, who sees the writing on the wall that another one of the children that the Lord has blessed me with is growing up. And I will have to learn to let go...again. But for now, I will count as a gift each day we have with her still at home, and I will enjoy watching her playing on her new laptop !