MORGAN is THIRTEEN!

Morgan hit a major milestone this year as she STARTED JUNIOR HIGH!  I always laugh when I take my kids to and from Junior High because the girls are all SO MUCH taller than the boys at that age!  They tower over them!  It just makes me chuckle.

Anyway, Morgan has grown more talented and more beautiful every year.  She is an AMAZING writer.  Like, BEYOND amazing.  I love to read anything she writes.  It's so descriptive - like I'm reading a professional author's novel!  She has become very talented at doing her hair.  I had a mom tell me that she always looks forward to seeing how Morgan does her hair each week when she comes to church.  Morgan is very creative.  She loves to create beautiful and crafty things.  She likes to design.  She will cut apart a shirt and reinvent it into a completely different piece of clothing.

Anyway, today we were able to celebrate her birthday! Grandma and grandpa Bybee came, along with Josh, Sarah, and Jace.

She received a new Nintendo DS game from Colton...

Some lip gloss, earrings, and a necklace from Kyle...

A beautiful heat resistant case for her flat iron, handmade by grandma from grandma and grandpa Bybee...

A selection of sparkly nail polishes from Mark and I...

Mark and I also gave her a series of books she had asked for called, "Pretty Little Liars",

...and another series she was VERY excited about!

I also found her this SO CUTE dress!  She was very excited.

We LOVE our little girl!  Even though she is now the same height as me, she will ALWAYS be our little girl.  She is an adorable sweetheart who amazes me with her strength and her conviction.  I am so excited to see where she decides to go with her life.

My sister Brittany surprised us by stopping by for a few hours the same night we were celebrating Morgan's birthday.  Her birthday was a few days later, so my mom (knowing Brittany was coming) surprised her with a birthday cake!  Brittany has a new job on a cruise ship, so we won't get to see much of her since they usually work for several months at a time without even a day off.  She wanted to see us before leaving, so she drove from California to leave her car with my mom and dad, spend a few hours with us, then hop on a plane to get ready for her cruise!

The next night Morgan invited some friends over for a birthday party.  They had  pizza and then opened presents.

Then they played a game of 007.  This game involved us driving them (slowly) in the back of Mark's truck, over to the other side of our subdivision.  We dropped them off and the adults (me and my parents in Mark's truck, and Mark on his bike) drove back to my house and then slowly started driving back through the neighborhood toward where we had dropped them off.  The idea was for us to spot them before they could get back to our house.  If we spotted them, they had to come jump in the truck while we searched for the rest of the crew.  Bryan, Colton, and Kyle were playing too.  The kids split up into teams so no one was by themselves.  We had a BLAST!  We played three times before it was 10pm and time for kids to go home.  It was a fun party!