from tot to teen

Around seven years ago, I moved into a house with three people, one of which was a six year old. In the initial stages of discussing the potential of us all living together, Ashes said, "You know I have a six-year old, right?" At the time, it seemed as though it may have been a deal-breaker. However, because of my oldest niece, I kinda like kids but I'm not too sure about teens. I've said before that, if I had a kid, I would have to give them away before they became a teenager because I can't stand the teen's attitude. However, Raven kind of changed that and today, we celebrated him becoming a teenager. Wow, how time flies...

Raven started acting like your stereotypical teen a while ago with the attitude and the voice changing and making his parents feel uncool. Shit, I know I was an ass when I was a teenager. However, watching Raven grow up and living with him for his formative years, I've had a change of heart. I still think that I don't care that much for teenagers as a general age bracket. Raven's a lot different though. He's a good kid who may have some attitude but it comes from a real place and he never gets mean and nasty, like I remember teens being when I was one of them. Initially, I was hesitant about moving in with a kid but I'm glad I did. I'm glad I got to help enrich his life and I'm glad he got to enrich mine and I look forward to seeing him become an awesome older teen and (OMG) one day (soon) an adult.

For his birthday, we went to Glowing Greens mini-golf course for the first time. It was okay although it did separate out his party quite a bit and it didn't allow for good picture taking because it was all in a black-light-lit basement. Afterwards, we went to the park for celebratory donuts. Next year, I'll remember early enough and bake him a cake.

What else?

 A handful of us continued on afterwards and headed to Circa 33 where we had the Blind Pig punch in a carafe for the first time. It's a nice place to drink at with the back porch and all.