It's your birthday!

Our oldest is having her seventh birthday today. She is so excited. The lucky girl happens to have a b-day that falls during Poultry Days (yes poultry days. I don't understand it either, but it is sort of a big deal here). So her grandfather is taking her to Poultry Days to ride a fair ride. I scouted the rides with her Friday afternoon to see which she is tall enough for, and which ones look the most fun. Her height is sort of a big deal too. The kid eats raw spinach because it's on her mom's list of top 10 best foods to make you tall and strong. Until our move, we had an Ultimate Pull-up Bar. Each night, we would do pull ups and she could sometimes knock out three or four -- an accomplishment for a six-year-old girl.
She's seven now. I can still vaguely remember holding her in my arms when she was a newborn. I also remember having to walk with her through the streets of Norton, VA at 2 a.m. because she refused to sleep. Now the little genius reads whole books and worries about the plight of the rainforest. She's still often mean to her sister, and refuses to share any of her toys. Her birthdays are always hard. She gets so much attention, and so many sweets -- that I often end up dolling out some punishment on her special day. We have a couple job leads, but no interviews scheduled. One of my BOLC classmates was killed in Afghanistan recently. He wasn't a regular part of my platoon, but he was one of my TCs when I was a platoon leader in COE. He did an excellent job. The stories about his death are conflicted (one states it was an IED during a firefight, the other an RPG during an ambush) but I know he did all he could for his platoon. He'll be missed.