May 30 HARPER

Saturday Evening: I can't remember how many years now that I have been invited to Harper's birthday party; but I am sure it is many! You see, Harper lives right next door to Jesse, and Harper and Kaity have been friends since they were little kids--Kenzie too!

Scott has been an almost best-friend of Jesse's since they were in 7th grade! How cool that they get to live next door to each other, which is due in large part to the generosity of Scott (but it's too complicated to explain here in this blog). However, Jesse has been very helpful to Scott in many ways too--so it's a two-way thing actually. Scott has a lot of the same interests and abilities Jesse has: they like to tear cars apart, rebuild engines, run sound equipment, fix stuff, etc.

I hardly took any pictures! Firstly, their DOG (the name of which escapes me) is a BIG pet they had tied on a leash nearby where Jesse and Scott are standing in the above picture. However, I didn't SEE the dog and when I approached and started walking away, it jumped and RAN toward me and then leaped, with it's paws extended (which looked really nice on my once very clean WHITE jogging pants), all over me! I don't do dogs, and even less BIG barking jumping HUGE dogs. Naturally, since I was taken by surprise, I screamed (embarrassing). Sigh. I did recover, but I stayed my distance from the beast.

Here is Harper! She is eleven now. She's a great kid and a lot of fun to be around. I try to make a birthday card every year for her. This year, however, I had to go to Facebook and steal some photos from her mom's account in order to have enough to make a decent card. I just haven't seen Harper much this year--mostly due to Kaity not coming over to my place anymore ... 

Harper's folks go all out on making sure their girls birthday celebrations are first rate. All of their family show up and many friends too.

Happy #11 to Harper!