Eight years old.

 Ella turned 8 in Grand Turk. I got her this little button to wear from Walmart. It is a nod to Disney. When you go to Disney you can stop at the town hall and get a little button that says "Happy Birthday". A week before her birthday we did do the Disney button thing which really is special. Everyone everywhere says, "Happy Birthday Princess" and you can tell Ella just eats it up. Lots of people noticed her birthday button but not on Grand Turk because there aren't lots of people on Grand Turk. Our boat was about the same population as Grand Turk. Amazing little place with sapphire waters.

Though we aren't accustomed to buying cruises for our daughter's birthday, Ella's day falls into one of "those" months. Everyone has them. When I was growing up two of my siblings shared my birthday week. So three of us in one week. July 15 (me), July 19 (Mark) and July 20 (Amanda) Ugh. It wasn't fun. In our month we have Ella's birthday, Sept 7, our anniversary Sept. 13 and Binyam's birthday Sept. 24. Not to mention Sept. 11 is the Ethiopian new year and there is usually some sort of celebration for that. And back to school. It is a crazy month and usually we don't remember our anniversary. I think we may have remembered half of them the whole ten years. So this was a very special thing and choose the date because it covered her birthday and anniversary but we celebrated many things.

I don't know if she will remember this birthday or not. But she will always  have that as part of her story that she turned eight in Grand Turk. I had a similar story. My birthday's were always in the summer and as a teen I went during the summer with Teen Missions. So. I turned 15 in Greece, Sweet 16 in Egypt, 18 in Honduras, 27 in Mongolia and 30 in Zambia. Pretty cool piece of personal history!