Sweet Jessica Celebrates Her Sweet 16

Sydney Crawford (Jess' friend from church, Ally, Jess and Madison)

We celebrated Jessica's Sweet 16 with a small family celebration. We went to Main Event for some awesome and very competitive Miniature Glow Golf.  Grandma, PawPaw Larry, The Garstka's, The DiSpigno's and Jessica's friend Sydney helped us show Jessica how much we love her.  (MaMaw had oral surgery and was  very sick, so she and Grady didn't attend.)

The obligatory crazy/silly shot

The girls had a great time and kept their game non-competitive.  In fact, I heard the birthday girl do a little cheating while she was writing the scores down.  She wanted everyone to get at least a 3 on the last hole.

The big people were more competitive.  During college, Fred, Dave and Angela worked at Mountasia (a miniature golf establishment) so they took this very serious.  Stacey seemed to take it serious too.  I have depth perception issues, so I didn't take it serious.  I just wanted to the game to be over.  Jonathan (always the odd man out in our group with all girls) played on the men's team.  I think he talked a lot trash, but couldn't keep up with his mouth!

Jonathan

After the ever-so competitive game of golf, we let the kids play games.  Ally (who is competitive like her mom) racked up lots of tickets and that talked the big girls out of some of theirs.

To end the day, we dropped Sydney off (who had plans later in the evening) and then we went to Applebee's for dinner. Jess had picked Applebee's as her restaurant of choice.  I was skeptical, but it turned out to have great service and the food was pretty good.

Our waitress was so sweet and said that she thought that we should not make her stand on her chair for the 'Happy Birthday' song.  Jessica was ever so grateful.

We had a great time celebrating Jessica's birthday.  We love her so much and appreciate all that she has been through and all that she has accomplished.  She is an awesome young lady and we hope that she continues to work hard and live up to her potential.   She has come so far in 7 months and we are pleased with her progress.  It wasn't easy and there will still be tough times ahead, but if she remembers that her parents love her and that her Heavenly Father loves her then she can do anything.