Trent is turning 10 in 5 days.  Makes me sad that my baby is growing up.  Even if there is another baby not even here yet.  Steve is giving him a "rite of passage"  gift.  Hopefully he won't shoot his eye out with it.  (think A Christmas story.)  At least he wears glasses like Ralphie.  The big problem is that Max thinks he gets to do everything that he gets to do.  Like tonight.... Trent gets to have 3 guys spend the night.  It will be an all night Star Wars/ Legoland adventure.  Max is going to be sorely disappointed when I send him to bed at 8:30 or 9 while the other guys are up till all hours.  Hopefully he will get over it with a minimum amount of complaint.  My sister and I were MUCH closer in age, and much more antagonistic toward each other in all respects.  I never would have let her hang out with my slumber party group, and vice versa.  We considered the other a major pain til high school at least.  Trent is generally very good about letting Max tag along when he has friends around.  But this is TRENT'S birthday party, not Max's.

Grandma Linda and Aunt Steph are coming next week to celebrate for a couple of days.  They haven't been down here for a very long time.  My brother in law got deployed to Iraq in July, so Steph hasn't gone too far from home since then.  And Linda is sort of put into a double duty capacity while Steph is single parenting.  They had talked about coming down earlier, but August and September were crazy for us with Farmer's market every Sat, Co-op planning, trying to find our rhythm, I went to a retreat thing, and so on and so forth..... So we finally have settled back into a quasi-routine which will be disrupted substantially in about 5-6 weeks.  I feel like I am getting more rigid with age, but by the same token, there is more to accomplish in a day.  I need to start implementing my morning routine again.... but rolling myself out of bed early is SO HARD right now.