17!

How has it been 17 years since Elena was born? It really feels impossible that our baby is almost an adult! 

We celebrated in the usual way (meaning nothing extravagant), but she git to pick supper and we had cake. Much to the delight of her brothers, she picked Wild Rice Soup - a popular choice in our house. Also to everyone's delight, I doubled the recipe, not realizing I had already doubled it when I wrote it down for my recipe box. So we ended up with a quadruple batch, having to move the soup to our largest pot halfway through. I guess Olivia wasn't thrilled (she won't touch the stuff), but she did enjoy dessert!

It has been such a joy to watch her grow and become a genuinely likeable, caring and productive human being - I realize that's not a guarantee when raising kids!! The only drawback is how close she is to graduating and flying the nest....but I'll leave that post for next year. For now, we'll try to enjoy every minute of having all our kids still at home together. 

Mary got this picture.  It's perfect - especially because Elena's name means "light"!