Christina's 12th Birthday Memories with her family

Christina blows out her B-day candles after we returned home from dinner. Her favorite Black Forest cake. Angela is in the background.


Christina tried on the family birthday hat. This hat must be worn at some point during your birthday.


Christina eats homemade gnocchi with red sauce at Boscos, an Italian Restaurant. For those that do not know what Gnocchi is, small pastas with potatoes in it. Major carb loading....:)


Christina goes to the spa after school on her birthday. She has one lady doing her pedicure and one lady giving her a facial. She also got a manicure. After that, Stan met us for dinner.


This is Christina on her way to school on her birthday. She wore a tiara at school. She got a lot of attention. Some high School boys said, "Hey Princess", when they passed her in the hall (her middle school is on the same campus as the high school). After that she took the tiara off.

Mom's reflection: Where did the time go? It seemed like only yesterday that I had an emergency C-section in a hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabic. Christina was born in 1997, the same time that Princess Di died. I remember the nurses all standing around the TV in my hospital room watching the news. She was the only non-Arab baby in the baby viewing room. I should of known then, that she would always stand out. She was also born 2 days before my birthday. I continue to say that she was the best birthday present I ever rec'd.

I remember friends visiting me in my hospital room for my birthday bringing gifts, balloons, etc. and all I could think about was, how much pain I was in from the surgery and wondering when my next dose of pain medicine was coming (I had some complications, after the delivery).

The end of August records many worldly happenings such as Princess Di's death, Hurricane Katrina (on my exact birthday), and Michael Jackson's birth (the same day and year, I was born). But the most important (to my memory) was the day I had our first child, Christiana Grace Shilling. A heritage from the Lord!

Stan and I waited 7 years for Christina to come into this world. Before then, we were both focused more on ourselves then others. God brought us to Saudi Arabia, to change our hearts, and grow us in Christ. He was preparing Stan and I to be parents (thank goodness for that).

Many of our friends had children already and their children were even in elementary school by the time we had our first child. Our friends, told us that, "children would change our lives (which scared us at the time)." Little did we know that having a child would be one of the biggest blessings in our lives (the other blessing was having our second child, Angela which is another story).

Christina is 12 now and becoming more and more independent every day and depending on Stan and I less and less. We are now her life coaches, guiding her as she makes many of her own decisions. My helicopter Mom tactics have had to cease and I have landed my helicopter. I now stand on the landing pad and praying for Christina and her heart. I pray that she will grow closer to the Lord, and seek Him as she goes through her day. I pray that she will have a servant's heart and focus on Jesus rather then herself. Stan and I learned that later in life, but we hope and pray that Christina will always have her best friend Jesus by her side and will turn to him during the storms of life.

Stan and I have started praying together every day again and most of our prayers these days are focused on Christina and her heart for others. It is so easy for pre-teens to focus on their outer beauty with all the media messages that present themselves as well the modeling from some of their peers. We pray for Christina's inner beauty and that others can see that as well. We pray that Christina's faith would be her own and not her parent's. A lasting faith that stays with her throughout her life.

We thank God for Christina and her life. God has big plans for Christina. Stan and I continue to stand at the helicopter pad and pray, offering guidance, whenever we can, with hopes that it will be accepted more times then it is ignored.