Yesterday was Emma’s 10th birthday! First, right when we woke up, Emma opened our presents. I gave her a necklace that she’d been wanting for a long time from the bookstore. Anja gave her a 2010 calendar,  peppermint body-lotion, berry incense, and sour icebreakers. Everything that Anja got her cost $1.(“I was going to get you a snow-globe,” Anja said, “but it costed $2.”)

Then we all hopped in the car to go to Waffle House(a family tradition). But the car wouldn’t start! It’s battery was completely dead. It was because we had lent our car to someone the night before, and they had accidentally left the dome lights on, which drained the battery. So, we waited and waited until finally some nice man came and jumped our car. That was the tragedy for the day.

After a delicious, filling breakfast from Waffle House, we went to pick up Kaylee(the baby we watch, now a year old), then went straight to PetLand. PetLand is a pet store with ferrets, rats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, hamsters, dogs, parrots, chickadees, cockatiels, finches, doves, hedgehogs, and basically any domestic animal imaginable. But strangely, there were not any cats. Well, anyway, you could hold every single animal there. And, being a family that loves and is accustomed to having animals(and lives in an apartment where no animals except for birds and fish are allowed), we like to go to PetLand to get our ‘animal fix’.

After PetLand, we went home and put Kaylee down for a nap. While she slept, Emma opened Mom and Dad’s present. They gave her rollerblades. She was thrilled; she’s been wanting some for years. After that, our friends, the Harrison’s, came up to play. When they left, we went down to the fireside room and ate sushi for dinner(yum!). Then Kaylee’s mom came and picked her up, and we went upstairs again. We were going to go to a really cool astronomy place where we could look through telescopes and be given a tour. But I don’t know why we didn’t, I think because it was to cloudy or some dumb reason like that. I was really looking forward to it. Oh, well. Instead of that, we watched part of a show called Sara Jane, but Emma got to scared so we didn’t finish it. Then we just went to bed, and I stayed up late writing in my journal.

Emma thinks that the best part of turning 10 is that she’s going into double digits. I think that the best part of her turning 10 is she’s old enough to take out the trash and do laundery. I’ve been looking forward to that day for a very long time.