It doesn’t seem real that I have a daughter that’s in her 20’s.  Seems just like yesterday she was in kindergarten and I was the queen of bringing homemade treats for snack days that were so complicated, the kids loved me and the moms hated me.  (You can see the many faces of Hannah in last years 19th birthday post).

I am sure I’ve talked about this snack before, but when Hannah was in kindergarten, I was handed a list for snack ideas.  What I read was “salty, meat, sweet, cheese, crunchy.”  For some reason I thought that I had to incorporate all of these into one snack idea.  And this was before you had to buy store bought stuff.

So I got pretzel nuggets (crunchy and salty), hard salami (meat), american cheese (cheese), and licorice whips (sweet).  I took one pretzel nugget, wrapped half a piece of salami around it, then wrapped the cheese around that and then tied it up with a little bow with the licorice whips.  OMG, I must have made about 250 of these – it took me all night, but they looked like little presents and so cute when I bundled them up in 25 individual bags.

Imagine my embarrassment the next day when I dropped these off for snack.  Um, turns out the “salty, meat, sweet, cheese, crunchy” were only suggestive words to come up with snack ideas!  But the kids loved them – some popped them all in their mouth at once, others untied the little bows and ate each piece separately.  Dillan’s Mom was not a fan.  On more than one occassion when I’d see her she would say “Dillan still wants me to make him those pretzel presents for his afternoon snack and I am just not going to do it!”

My other favorite snack I brought was when I made rainbow bread.  I first saw it at a bakery in Oak Park, but they wanted $6.00 a loaf!  I decided to make my own – this was also another task because I ended up making 8 loaves of bread at a time – each batch of dough made two loaves of bread – so each batch was a different color, then I would take 1/4 of each colored dough and knead them together before baking.  I thought I had pictures of it, but couldn’t find it, so thanks google images:

And now fast forward she’s just about to finish up her associates degree at our local community college, and is applying to Northwestern, Roosevelt University and a couple other Illinois schools to find out where she’ll finish up.  We’ve completed our FASFA paperwork for federal aid – and Roosevelt already offered her a $13,000 scholarship without her even officially applying!

Her goal is to marry speech pathology with marriage and family counseling.  She’s always been a great student – I don’t believe I’ve helped her with homework since she was in the second grade.

So Hannah – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  You make me so proud and I am so happy that you are my daughter.  I love you!

For new readers, you can check out my story of Hannah’s here.

Still one of my favorite pictures of Hannah – she’s probably 2 1/2 here:

But I love how we can just be together and laugh!

Hannah has school today, but will be home early afternoon.  I am taking a half day and we are going to thrift shop, then have dinner at Bistro Wasabi.  Yum!