HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIA

Today Mia turns twenty! I no longer have a teenager in the house!

Mia, named Mary Katherine Price (or Maria Katerina on her Indonesian birth certificate) was born on July 31, 1986, 9:58pm Papuan time, in Mulia, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Mia has always thought it was cool that she has both an Indonesian and American birth certificate and she is officially "an American citizen born abroad". Her first passport photo was taken at age 2 weeks. She spent her first four years in Indonesia, then 12 1/2 years in Oregon and the past 3 1/2 years in Los Angeles. My Mia is a delight and has always added so much to our family. Her three older siblings alternately indulged her and tolerated her, but they could never ignore her. Her mommy and daddy adored her, even while they wondered if they would ever get her to obey without an argument. And now she is grown up, a friend to those siblings she tormented and looked up to, a college senior who loves to muck around in old bones and mud, a beauty who is beloved by her Marine, a daugher who continues to amaze her parents with her wisdom and delight them with her cheery disposition.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIA, our anak bunksu, Mia Maria, Bud, fashion police, care taker. And in the next twenty years, may you continue to grow and mature into the woman God is making you, the wife Tim needs, maybe the mother to some of the world's most beautiful children, an archeologist of renown.

And may you someday actually get your driver's license!