In Celebration of....Me

Today is my seventeenth birthday! Woohoo for seventeenth birthdays! I just wanted to take this time to say that I know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like half of you half as well as you deserve. Actually, I never said that, Bilbo Baggins did in Lord of the Rings, but I couldn't resist the temptation to say it, so I did. After all it is my 17th birthday, so I figure I can do whatever I want.

I decided that as a special birthday kinda thing, I would do a post strictly about me. Because you know I always do posts about other people (except for when I ride horses, or paint my room or go on trips) and I decided this morning that by golly it is MY birthday I'm gonna do a post about ME!

So here it is, in all its glory, the almost first post dedicated entirely to Vanessa Tuepker! Seeing that it is such a momentous occasion and all I decided that what I wanted to do on this was examine the first seventeen years of my life!

I was born about the cutest baby in the world.

Don't let my happy face fool you though, I could also be very serious

but mostly I was just happy and by the way, rocking chairs are about the funnest things on this planet.

I was also, umm how do you say, errr...fat.

Just look at those chubby little cheeks! They match the hippo on my belly which I don't think is a coincidence. Mom has a very unique sense of humor.

This also showed itself in my haircuts. Not one of us four daughters escaped having a bowl haircut for the first ten years of our lives, except maybe Jennifer, lucky first child.

But I will give mom this, she did know how to dress me up for special occasions.

And when I did have long hair, she always made sure to put them in pigtails because pigtails are about as much fun as hair can have.

These next few pictures show the side of me that I don't often like to talk about. You see I am a very competitive and rather spoiled person and well, just look for yourself.

Before the trophy:

After the trophy:

But hey, it worked right? I got the trophy: mission accomplished!

Actually, I am inclined to believe that me throwing a fit just to get what I wanted was very rare. Right? I mean seriously, me throw a fit? Preposterous! Especially since my other photos show me as being rather laid back.

Time out from looking at me. Just look at Marianna in this picture. It must have been very early because she looks like she's still trying to get some sleep!

Please understand that I am only including this next photo to show how dedicated I am to telling of all of the major experiences in my early life. Remember how I was talking about short haircuts earlier....well this next photo explains why I am completely against them.

It also appears that I am slightly challenged in this photo. Okay a little more than slightly, shall we say a complete tweaker.

But no matter how funny I looked, one thing is for sure: I had a ton of fun as a kid.

And it is my personal belief that every child should have an old, dirty, farm pond to play in as a child.

But unfortunately the more fun you have, the faster time goes, and before I knew it I wasn't playing in farm ponds anymore, but was instead babysitting and looking after little kids who were having fun playing.

and for a while that was fun too. But never as fun as actually playing yourself. Of course then we moved to Maui and I had a great time, so that made up for having to grow up because I learned that you can always play.

And now I'm seventeen whole years old! It's pretty scary, let me tell you. But rest assured, I still have time for fun. See.

I never realized how much I've changed or how much I'll continue to change. Anyway, enough of this deep, if you can call it that, talk. I'm off to fly a kite and add a little color to the sky, it's been much too blue here lately. Wish me luck!