Big Birthday Blog

It has quite rightly all been about Rebecca this week as we celebrated her 18th birthday. I suppose legally, we no longer have any children. In practice of course the reality is very different.

As far back as we can remember birthdays have been very important to Rebecca and she would often plan them for months before the day arrived. In those days of course we would be heading to a Tumble Jungle or other such nonsense with about 30 other kids. How I enjoyed those afternoons!

Her 18th was relatively low-key in terms of plans, with a family meal on Thursday night and a more raucous affair on Saturday with her friends. All that matters is that she enjoyed both and is certainly paying for it this morning, which I can assure is not a lingering aftermath from Thursday.

The family affair was at a local Italian restaurant.

With the average age well above 18, it was left to Rebecca and Emily to indulge in cocktails as I savoured my pint of lager shandy. We returned home for a decadent brew and slice of birthday cake.

Those of you who have been reading this stuff for a while may remember Emily’s 18th, with the extravagant video reveal, telling her about the surprise holiday to WDW. Once you do that for your eldest daughter there is little point trying to do the same for the second so Rebecca has known about the holiday in August since we booked it. Despite the time between her birthday and the holiday, we will be celebrating it whilst in Florida. A birthday badge will be worn by Rebecca whilst we are there.

However, despite having no big surprise to reveal, it was only fair to inflict all the embarrassing photos on her as we did with Emily, commemorating her first 18 years on the planet. I post it here, but warn you that it is quite long and for anyone not in our family it may be beyond your interest limits.

It isn’t as Disney themed as Emily’s equivalent, as the end game wasn’t a Disney holiday, so the music chosen represents the different tastes and phases (at least some of them) of her childhood.

If you do make it to the end, then you will see that we did slip a small surprise in, with a short break to Barcelona for Rebecca and Tom at the end of June. She seemed happy enough with her present and she is looking forward to some sun and no doubt some sangria.

Today she is recovering from her first legal bout of drunkeness and is currently watching trash TV in her room in a post McDonald’s food coma. She is also nursing the first phase of her brand new tattoo. I cannot say I am entirely happy with her having it done, but she is legally an adult and there is little I can do. She has another couple of hours to complete it and again she’s happy with it so I suppose that’s the important thing.

So that’s both childhoods done. It’s been a pleasure (mostly) and all things considered we’ve done OK. Now, we go onto the next phase and whatever that brings for both of them. On a personal note there is still a small amount of birthday cake left and that represents my immediate next phase of life.

Till the next time…..