Birthday Memories

I started looking through pictures for projects I have sewn for the kids and realized most of them were for my cupcake,Jennifer. I call her that because my dad called me his little cupcake and my brothers and sisiters sometimes still refer to me as Daddy's Little Cupcake. That's not what this post is about though so I need to stop rambling and get to the point!

On November 2, 1984 our daughter was born on my brother, Matthew's birthday in a local hospital in Fulda, Germany were Tom was stationed. It was an easy birth and the Germans treated me like a queen. We were very excited to get a girl after two boys but it really wouldn't have mattered. We had a couple of names picked out, Katherine Elizabeth (Katie Beth) but my sister thought it was too "country". Then I wanted to name her after our mothers, Nancy (my mom) Joyce (his mom) but Tom had a bad experience with a girlfriend named Nancy so that was out. We decided on Jennifer Joyce, JJ for short (although my brother said we should have named her Matty after him, I kind of like it now) We didn't realize how popular the name, Jennifer, would get.

I made these pj's for the kids. Jen looks like Sammi in this picture doesn't she?
We were living in a German farmhouse at the time and their electric was 220 volts and all our christmas lights were 110volts so we didn't have any lights on the tree, no big deal right? Wrong. All Thomas asked Santa for that year were lights for the tree. When he woke up Christmas morning you better believe that tree was lit!

Here she is on her second Christmas again in home made jammies.
This year was when the Cabbage Patches came out. We put our names on the wait list at the PX and then put them in lay-away. We got three and they were $25 EACH.

I made this velvet dress for her and a matching one for her cabbage patch.

My sister made the sweaters for the boys. Can I say now that even though I picked out the yarn I never liked them?

My parents came to visit us in Colorado for Easter in 1988. Look she still has her Cabbage Patch and I made her and the doll matching dresses. I loved sewing for her. I would even make her scrunchies (remember those!) and use the same material to put a ruffle on a pair of socks to match.

I threw this outfit together the day before school pictures when Jen was in Kindergarten. It was scrap material and old patterns. Not my greatest effort but the hat is cute.I wanted her to have something new but we couldn't afford anything. Maybe that's why I buy the grandkids too many clothes:)This was an outfit we put together for Thanksgiving when we lived in Regensburg, Germany. The school was an American school but it only had about 100 kids K-8. She was in a Primary classroom (1st-3rd) for two years.

I made this for her Senior Prom. She went to a Christian High School and they had some pretty strict dress code restrictions. The biggest one for her was no cleavage. She is big busted and we found no dresses in her age group that didn't show some, so we designed and made this one. She was so beautiful, just like a princess. I just have to throw this one in! My dad always had a special chair and he loved holding and singing to the children. "A You're Adorable" and "Pennies From Heaven" In this picture we were getting ready to leave after a visit (it was easier to drive at night with 3 kids) Thomas (Tommy)was sleeping and we were trying to get him in the car without waking him up so Grandpa Bob was teaching them how to Shhhh.........This is me, Ella , my dad, my brother Matt & his grandson, Luke ,on my father's 75th birthday. We surprised him and showed up without notice and all my brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews showed up for steak at this steak house. The best presents are those of your time & love. He was very happy that day. Little did we know we would only have one more birthday to share with him. He would have been 79 this month.

Natalie Grace October 30, 1980
and this is our Natalie, Editor of the Fort Knox High School Newspaper. Her husband to be ,our son Thomas, was also on the newspaper staff. We've known her since she was 15 years old, even though they didn't date then we knew their friendship was special and so was she. Thanks for sticking with us all these years and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

FYI see some of the grandkids Halloween fun here