Happy twelfth birthday, Rebecca!
First of all, I hadn’t really thought about it, but since moving here to Witch Falls, I seem to have a lot more of my journal entries start with ‘Happy Birthday’ notes for someone than I ever did anywhere else Mom and I lived. That’s just another little reminder of why this really is home now.
Being a kid anywhere does have its fair share of strange, and Rebecca’s birthday party sleepover definitely fell into that category for Rowen and me today. The party started after school; and Rebecca had some of her ‘country’ friends come home with her. Rowen and I checked in at the computer store and our houses first; visiting with parents, Ethan, and Ehlana; and getting our overnight bags and Rebecca’s presents before going over to her place.
We don’t normally think about being short – or vertically challenged as some kids prefer. Most of the kids in our grade are taller than we are too, but it definitely felt different tonight. Rowen and I were anywhere between six inches and a foot shorter than all of the older girls at the party; and we felt even more out of place than we normally had since Rebecca and Jenny had started to cross over nearly a year ago.
Miranda was at the house for a while after school before needing to get back to the Inn, but we did have Jake and Stephanie supervising until we all went to the Inn for dinner too. While we hadn’t crossed over, Rowen and I could at least understand why the rest of Rebecca’s friends had a tendency to crush on her big brother. Stephanie was amused by that, and Jake was either oblivious to the attention or he was doing a good job at pretending not to notice. Watching that going on did remind me of some of the stories Aunt Leanne has told me about how much her friends liked Dad; but it was weird to experience that from a kid perspective.
Michael hadn’t been home after school, but he was at the Inn for dinner; and he had Tim Landry with him for best friend moral support. Miranda, Jacob, Jake, and Stephanie were all working, but they all spent as much time with us as they could; and Michael, Tim, Rowen, and I were all glad that Miranda had invited Rebecca’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to the dinner part of the party. I haven’t mentioned it before, though Mom has added the Witch Falls family trees to the archive; but Miranda is one of Edward and Rosemary Bassett’s kids, so Rebecca has quite a few Bassett family cousins. I wasn’t surprised when Jessica Bassett became my personal dinnertime shadow from the time she got to the Inn with her mother, brother, and baby sister until we all left for our homes.
Having Jessica there to entertain us was fun, and the extra guests also kept the rest of the girls from talking about boys at all until we got back to the Stone’s house again. I was fairly surprised when we found out that Michael and Tim were staying at home tonight too. Rebecca wasn’t happy about having the two boys around – especially when they didn’t just go off and play video games somewhere. It wasn’t that they were purposely bugging us or anything; but they did spend most of the night hanging around the edges of the party.
It didn’t take Rowen and I that long to figure out why Michael and Tim wanted to stick around for the party; and we were mostly amused to watch our two classmates as they tried not to be obvious about their appreciation of Rebecca (for Tim), and her friends. We were able to find that funny because Rowen and I weren’t among the girls being watched; and because it’s the first time we’ve seen them showing any signs of the guy equivalent of crossing over.
While Michael and Tim were physically on the outside looking in on the party, Rowen and I were figuratively on the outside too. We didn’t want to talk about boys like all of the other girls did; they were too cool and grown up for any sleepover fun that we all would have thought was exciting just a year or two ago; and let’s not even mention how out of it we were for anything involving certain physical developments that neither Rowen nor I can relate to yet.
Fortunately for us, Michael and Tim weren’t our only entertainment for the night. There were a couple of decent movies to watch, and after Miranda and Jacob got home from the Inn; they let Rowen and I help out with making pizzas for a late night snack. After the pizzas were demolished with some enthusiastic help from Jake, Michael, and Tim; it was time to get changed before returning to the living room to watch movies again. That was a bit awkward, since Rowen and I were definitely out of place when it came to nightwear fashion; but watching Michael’s and Tim’s reactions to the twelve and thirteen-year old girls in nighties was absolutely priceless.
We stayed in the living room until sometime after two o’clock, and then we headed upstairs. Rowen and I were in the same guest room, and while Rebecca and Jenny had some of the other girls in Rebecca’s room with them for a while; we wanted to have a few minutes to talk by ourselves before getting some sleep. I’ve been doing my usual nightly computer checks and this journal entry while we chatted; but Rowen’s starting to fall asleep, and if I want to have time for Tai Chi before it’s time to get ready for a breakfast buffet at the Inn; I need to get some sleep too. The bottom line for today is that Rebecca had a very happy birthday, and it’s been a fun, if occasionally awkward and weird, day for me. What a great start to the first weekend of December!