14

On December 1 Sarah turned 14. I am always an emotional mess on all of my children's birthdays, but especially so Sarah's. Her birthday is a reminder of all that we have to be thankful for as a family. It is a day when I can pause and thank God that she is an abled body person. It is a day when I thank God that she is only blind, that she only has numbness in her left calf, that her body gets wiped out quickly from exhaustion. There was a time when any of those three things would have been devastating to me, but now I know better. I know that there are so many who are truly so much worse off. All of the physical struggles that Sarah has are navigable. They are almost easy compared to where she could be. Yes, I think you can say that on December 1 of every year you will find me in an almost constant state of prayer with God thanking him for all of the blessings that Sarah brings.

To celebrate her special day my mom and dad drove out to spend a couple of days with us. On her birthday we did the usual - decorating the table, making her a birthday shirt, etc...We also had our second annual Blind Olympics in which the other three kids wear blindfolds and have to perform a series of activities without sight. It is a good time.

I decided to do a couple of things differently this year for Sarah on her special day. I knew she was excited about her birthday, but was trying to not be as she walks the fine line between childhood and adulthood. Because I want all of my children to embrace childhood for as long as humanly possible I really racked my brain trying to think of different things that I could do to make her feel excited all day about her birthday.

To start off with I bought her 14 gifts. Mostly it was small things - a piece of her favorite candy, a book series she was asking for in which each book represented one item, slippers, etc...nothing huge and extraordinary because I had to try and stick to a budget. We gave her her first gift at 9:22 am which was when she was born and had her open each gift on the :22 of each following hour. She received her last gift at 10:22 pm. She really enjoyed this a lot.

Next, I had the 5 of us + my mom and dad answer the following questions:

1.) What is your favorite memory of Sarah?
2.) What is your favorite quality about Sarah?
3.) What do you wish for Sarah for her future?

Each of us read our answers out loud. Over Christmas break I will be re-writing all of the answers in braille, so that when Sarah needs a pick me up she will have all of these reminders that she is loved immensely.

Finally, the 8 of us went up to a pottery shop where we painted a jar of Sarah's choosing together.Sarah painted the jar itself and then the rest of us decorated the jar with something that signifies either ourselves or something about Sarah. (For example, I painted a zia symbol and Bob painted mountains.) Sarah is going to put all of the answers to the activity above in the jar we all made together.

As for the rest of the day, we played games, went to Chipotle for dinner, and chilled out at the house. Sarah was pretty tired by the end of the day, but said that she had a good day. Her favorite parts were the gift an hour idea and everyone answering the questions about her.