Almost Eight

It's hard/easy to believe that Maria is almost eight.  She is doing just fine, we are having what is turning into a big party this weekend, on Saturday.  What can I do, she wants to invite a few friends from school, then we have friends from our neighborhood and some of those friends have siblings who we are friends with too and then poof! we have over 20 kids there for the party.  It really is a more the merrier situation, though, because it's just for two hours and Maria really loves having a lot of people around.  Anyway, we are getting her ears pierced for her birthday.  I personally had to be ten years old to get my ears pierced, but that was almost FORTY years ago, good Lord, so I think she'll be okay.  I told her it's going to hurt and everything but she doesn't care.

Here are some pictures, I took the three girls downtown one night last week.  I used frequent flier miles to book a hotel right downtown and we went to the mall, to the movies, met my sister Laura for dinner, went to Monument Circle to see the lights on the 'tree' and then went to the pool at the hotel the next morning.  It was a very good trip, they had a lot of fun.  Maria is at a good age for stuff like that, she has some level of appreciation of it and she won't, like, run into the street.