Public Apology and Happy Belated Birthday Amber!!!

One week ago today my LOVELY niece Amber turned 11. At the same time I posted my blog about our friend Kendall and I wanted to leave that post "on top" for a significant amount of time. It was not to slight my LOVELY niece in anyway. WELL I found out last night that she was upset with me that everyone else's Birthday made the blog - but not hers. Can you ever forgive me Amber???

She knows I love her - she knows I love to call her "my first born" - you see when Amber was only 4 months old her and Colleen came to live with me and Joe. We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment in Matthews and it was AWESOME!!! Colleen would work at Hops on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights and then Saturday during the day. So Joe and I had Amber to ourselves A LOT!!! She was what I would politely call - a fussy baby - lots of issues with eating, formula etc... all out of her control - but still fussy. She love, love, loved to fall asleep with Joe holding her - it was to the point we called him "Uncle Goodnight" because he could always get her to calm down and fall asleep.

In the time they lived with us we experienced lots of firsts - her doing the army crawl, solid food and my personal favorite - her first word - Ma-Ma. The 4 of us were just sitting there and she looked at Colleen and said it and then me, Joe and Colleen looked at each other like - "Did she just say what I thought she said..."

More firsts we were there for - her first circus, trip to Disney, meal at a truck stop (a whole different blog...)

When Colleen and Amber moved back to NY for a few years it broke my heart - I cried and cried as the moving truck pulled away - but I told Amber then we would always be together in our hearts - we have a special song - from Tarzan - "You'll be in my heart" - I made sure she knew all the words before they left.

Thank goodness the path led them back to Charlotte and back to all of us.

So Happy Belated Birthday My Sweet!!!





Amber, Chloe & Danielle on our trip to Havelock to see The DellaRatta's


This is Amberlina - the one I am trying to avoid by posting now....


Another shot of Amberlina - sorry babe but you shouldn't have been so grumpy to me last night about this post....


The beautiful girl she is today - heading off to Middle School in the fall - say it isn't so.....