Emily's 13th birthday!!

On Wednesday my sweet oldest child turned 13 years old! I'm really not sure how that happened seeing as how I'm still 28 but some how it did. Right before my very eyes! And oh how beautiful she is! Not just physically either. She is blossoming into this young woman who loves the Lord and shows it. The Lord has blessed her with an amazing singing voice too! She has been writing songs for the last couple of years and they are amazingly heart felt. There are not many nights where I don't hear her upstairs playing the guitar and singing. She loves to worship the Lord through this gift and has become more and more confident as time goes by. Anyway...all of that to say on Wednesday she got a super special gift! One that had to be documented here. Our small group meets on Wednesday nights so we decided to have a small group 13th birthday celebration for Emily. She requested sushi for her birthday dinner so that's what we did. We happen to love sushi so she didn't have to twist our arms too bad to do this! Another thing I need to add here is that we happen to be friends with Shane and Kellie Everett and Shane and Beth Barnard (aka Shane & Shane and Bethany Dillon) and they are in our small group along with my sister, Sara and her husband Matt, and Chad and Christy Coleman. Ok. Enough set up already...gaw! The Shanes and Beth have really been instrumental in encouraging Emily in her love of worship music and song writing. I don't even think they know just how much!! So we go eat dinner and after its over we decide to do cake and gifts....


Emily's fun cake!

Shane E, Kellie, Beth with baby Lucy in her belly, Emily, and Natalie

Matt, Sara, Shane B, and Brian


So when its cake time the Shanes pull out a guitar and sing happy birthday to Emily! Shane and Shane style, of course! Emily was enjoying that fully!!
But then something fabulous happened afterward. Shane B pulled a pink bow out of his back pocket, stuck it on the guitar, and gave it to her for her birthday!! Both the Shane's had talked about it along with their wives and wanted to give this to her as a special gift since this is such a special birthday!

Emily was so shocked!! And happy!! (added note post facto from Dad... This was a gift like no other and literally brought me to tears (almost) when they told me of this gift idea for her. Was so honored that they would choose to honor Em with this gift at this stage of her life. This is no simple guitar. The guys happened to be endorsed by Breedlove Guitars and this particular guitar was one that this company made specifically FOR Shane B due to his stature as a guitar player in the industry. Shane E told me about the list price they said they would have charged IF they even would sell this version to the public... Let's just say it was well more than I paid for my first new car in 1990. After the tears of awesomeness - had to actually pray to God to root out the envy in my heart, cuz as one who loves gear and instruments - realized I don't even own a guitar this nice!)

She literally didn't have any words to say!!

Here is the birthday girl with her new guitar!

Thank you so much guys for making this so special for her!! She hasn't quit playing it since Wednesday night! We're just so honored!!