Fourteen for lovely Livie ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLIVIA!

Everytime we are with Olivia, we try to take some pretty pictures of her. For some reason, she is pretty resistant to having her picture taken. But when she is in the middle of a fun time, she relaxes, and then we have better luck!

When Olivia and her family came to Grand Rapids last summer, we did lots of fun stuff together. These pictures are of Olivia at the John Ball Zoo, riding the zip line.

We spent a morning over at Krupp Farms picking strawberries and visiting the animals at the petting zoo there ...

Olivia and I rode a camel together at the zoo ... one of the highlights of my summer!

I love this picture of Olivia touching the stingrays. She was pretty taken with them ~ they were amazing to touch.

This is a nice picture of Olivia doing the Skywalk at the zoo. Olivia is very athletic. She runs really fast. She is on the track and field team at her middle school. She also plays the flute in the band at school, and I think this year she is going to learn to play the piccolo as well.

Grandpa tried to take her photo while she was helping to set up the audio equipment at their new church ... but she was too quick for him this time!

Just last week, we were in Austin visiting Olivia and her family. Grandpa Jones thought he'd sneak on down to her bus stop and get her picture as she stepped off the bus. Olivia didn't even notice him standing in the shade of the shelter at the bus stop, so he did get this picture of her. I was going to wait at the house for Olivia to walk home, but then I suddenly had a terrible thought of Olivia's bus driver seeing Grandpa Jones (a total stranger) at the bus stop with his camera and all of his fancy lenses ... and had visions of the bus driver calling the police on him ... and I wasn't TOO sure Olivia would claim him as her grandfather!

So I ran down to the bus stop to rescue Olivia from embarrassment and Grandpa Jones from ... who knows what (!) ... and we all had a good laugh about it. Except the next day, Olivia did say that her bus driver asked her if she "knew that old guy with the camera" (!). We grandparents can be obnoxious with our cameras.

We hope you have a wonderful fourteenth birthday celebration, Olivia. We think you are beautiful, inside and out, and we love you very much!