Lulu is officially, a teenager!

We totally celebrated her birthday in style...

I decorated the dining room while she was at school. I even made her a birthday tiara out of sparkly pipe cleaners!

I picked her up after school to go and get her Boccone Dolce "cake" from Papa Hydns (now, officially all three Camarillo girls favorite dessert!) and then I made her favorite, spaghetti & meatballs. Grandma Louise and Uncle Jeff joined us for dinner and festivities.

This decadent confection is basically a Pavlova dessert: thick, chewy and crunchy layers of meringue layered with fresh whipped cream and fresh fruit (bananas, strawberries, raspberries & blueberries) then drizzled with chocolate. YUM!!! The dessert itself is, no kidding, 8 inches high...

Lulu got pretty much everything she wanted (books ruled the gift list in 2018, whereas 2019 was all about clothes.) Some great photos below!

This is a shirt she wanted, made by a YouTuber she likes and follows. The chickens gave it to her for her birthday, BTW.

Two pairs of pink earbuds from Bean (Lulu blows through earbuds like they are going out of style, so the dollar store is a great place to replenish her stock).

A sleep eye mask in her trademark Leopard from Bean, too. Now, hopefully there will be minimal yelling at bedtime when Bean wants to read in bed and Lulu wants to sleep.

Fun socks from Uncle Jeff!

Lulu really, really wanted this for her birthday. She had an identical one (but in a smaller size) when she was younger. It's of a Girl Scout going through a forest, pulling a wagon of Girl Scout Cookies and Ninja Squirrels getting ready to take her out.

Lulu, Bean and I enjoyed the rest of the cake on Saturday morning for breakfast. Boccone Dolce is truly the breakfast of champions, especially when paired with Tia Maria spiked coffee.

No, seriously. That's what happened! (According to Bean.)

This morning, it wasn't even 6:15 am yet and I heard Bean awake and calling me to come in to their bedroom.

Bean: "Please don't turn on the light, please don't turn on the light! I'm so sorry Momma, don't be mad at me, please don't be mad and me and yell at me!"

Me: "????"

Bean: "I don't know how this happened..."

Me: "What happened?"

Bean: "Please don't be mad at me Momma, please don't yell, I'm so sorry, I'm soooo sorry!!!"

Me: (warily) "Did you cut your hair?"

Bean: "No."

Me: (relieved) "Okay, then, let's get you out of bed. What happened?"

Bean: "A lollipop got stuck in my hair somehow last night. I don't know where it came from or how it happened, I think it just walked right up into my bed! It just walked right up into my bed..."

Me: "Well, let's get you down and go in the other room and check it out, then, shall we?"

Bean: "Okay. I'm so sorry, please don't be mad at me..."

Me: "I'm not, let's take a look."

I surveyed the scene in the kitchen:

Yep, totally sticky and ensnared in her hair. What you can't tell from the photos, is the whole underside of her hair at the back along her neckline is a hard, crunchy, sticky mess.

UGH!

So, I usher her into the bathroom. Meanwhile, she is animatedly rambling about how this lollipop walked up the steps of her bed and got into bed with her.

Seriously.

So, I put a handful of conditioner on the lollipop, gently worked it out, then put her in the shower to clean her up. As I did I said...

Me: "I'm going to have to get some Lollipop Traps so this doesn't happen again. We can't have Lollipops walking into your bed at night getting stuck in your hair!"

Bean: "Oh Momma, (laughing) that doesn't make any sense at all! There is no such thing as lollipop traps!"

But evidently, they do sprout legs and find themselves dancing with her hair at night after she goes asleep.

We have 5 chickens*.

We got 5 eggs today!

If this continues at this rate, we'll be in the urban farming egg business this spring/summer in the neighborhood...

*We inherited/adopted six chickens, but Helen, the Buff Orphington, got re-homed a week and a half ago. Helen (Helen the Hoover, we called her) was not a nice chicken. No one liked Helen. There were many reasons why Helen was re-homed, but the top two were because she was mean and a bully.

If  Helen was a human, I would not like her nor want to be friends with her. In the slightest.

My girlfriend has a farm and took Helen in for us as a half-way house/farm of sorts. Evidently, there is a woman out in the East County, who takes in older hens (who are in "hen-o-pause") to live out their golden days. My friend is currently waiting to hear back if that was going to be her final destination.

Going to a chicken retirement community is a very lucky break for Helen, I'll just leave it at that.