Miriam's 10th Birthday

 Oh sweet Miriam. I love you so much. You are such an amazing girl in so many ways. You are thoughtful, hardworking, fun, strong, smart, kind, magnetic, and so darn cute! We feel like we won the lottery getting to have you in our family. 

Beautiful girl.

At 10 years old you weighed 59 lbs which was the 11.27% and were 54 in tall which was the 42.50%. 

You love reading so much! You get so excited about this or that series and love quoting it to us. In fact one day I heard you ask Ellie, "Do you ever think that books give us too much imagination because we are not focusing on the real world?"

You still love audiobooks, but you earn your audiobook time because whenever you listen to one there always seems to be a load or two of laundry waiting to be folded. You are kind of our unofficial laundry folder. 

You help out at home in so many other ways too. You and Eliza take turns on doing dishes and cleaning the table at dinner time. One evening I chuckled when I heard you ways "The most annoying thing in the universe is ranch stuck on plates."

I swear, you didn't mind getting your birthday photos taken despite what this picture shows.

Another day I heard you tell us "Keep your outternal things still."

You went through a phase where you ended your sentences to us by callings us "Peeps." 

Another day we were playing at the park and I was taking a little video, "Don't sow me on the video...I don't want to be seen in my weakened state." You were laying on the grass. :) 

You have been a champion with this move. Your friend Nina was really sad about you leaving, but you have been so sweet to write her letters and do zoom calls with her. You have had such a good attitude about moving to a new school too. You say that all of the girls are just good friends and there is no one being excluded. I love that. 

Your new teacher, Mrs. Drumm, is encouraging you to learn chess. You have taken a real liking to it. You and Ellie like to play chess pretty regularly. I heard you tell her once, "Little do you know that you are putting yourself in checkmate." You are so funny. 

1. What makes you happy? Spending time with my family. I like to cuddle and play games with my family.
2. What is your favorite animal? Deer, dolphin, sea turtle, panda
3. What is your favorite color? Dark Green
4. What is your favorite thing to eat? I can't decide. I like to eat chocolate. I like those Godiva Hearts you guys have. (Me too!) I like pesto burgers. 
5. What is your favorite thing to do? I like to read and cuddle.
6. What is your favorite TV show/ movie? Magic School Bus is my favorite TV show. Right now I am really liking Encanto for a movie.
7. What are you really good at? Reading fast.

   

   10 years old!
   
   

8. What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be a stay at home mom but if that doesn't work out, I want to be a dermatologist because I like examining people's skin and poking it.
9. What is your favorite song? I really like "Ask of God."
10. What do you and your mom do together? We play games together like this morning playing Dutch Blitz.
11. What do you and your dad do together? We fold laundry together sometimes.
12. What is your favorite book? This is such a hard question. Hey, you're not supposed to type that! Mommy! You're not supposed to.... I can't decide. One of my favorite books is "Moon Rising." Another favorite book is, "Force of Fire." "Fablehaven" book 5. 
13. What’s the best thing about being you? Being the middle child, which is also bad but also good. It's good because when I am the older middle child I get almost all of the same privileges as the oldest but I don't all of the responsibility. It's bad because being the middle child means I don't get the pity and innocence of being a younger child. And I have to do more chores that the younger children. And I don't get teen Tuesday as soon as Ellie does.
14. What is something that makes your family special? Whenever we go on a trip we get an ornament as a souvenir from the that trip. And we inherited ones from our Grandparents.
15. What do you love doing? Reading. I also love verbally day dreaming and eating fruit and chocolate.
16. What do you know enough about that you could teach others? I know enough about math that I could teach them up to a 5th grade level. I know how to play a lot of board and card games. 
17. What is the best thing that has happened to you? Being born. If I hadn't been born I wouldn't have had other things. 
18. If you had three wishes what would they be? 1. To be an animus. (Magic to do anything you want.) 2. End world poverty. 3. End any problems with nature. The animals that were going extinct would stop going extinct. Global warming would end, and pollution would end.

 For your birthday treat you told me, "I am not really a pie person. It is good enough to have for my birthday, but I prefer cheesecake." Turns out you had banana splits. 

Miriam is here to tell you about her birthday: In my defense banana splits are delicious and I forgot I said that, BUT I am definitely having chocolate cheesecake next year. 

I loved my presents. How can anyone not like pretzels dipped in chocolate? I loved squirting my sisters with the water guns. Another one was coupons to a water park and zipline which was AWESOME! Also I'd been complaining about not having enough water on hikes and the cords on headphones getting tangled, so the camelback and wireless headphones were perfect. But the best present of all was getting to have with my family on my birthday. 

I loved the day and the people in it, All in all it was a pretty amazing birthday!

I can't believe how fast you're growing up. You are such an amazing girl. You brighten our lives everyday. I love you times a million! Love, Mommy

Eliza 10th birthday photos

Look how gorgeous this 10 year old is! Months ago, Eliza told us she wanted to visit the temple grounds on her birthday. Unfortunately the gates were closed when we got there, so we took pictures outside. I still love them. 

It was cold that day, Holland needed Mommy's jacket. She is a little cutie.

I can't pick a favorite.

Miriam wanted some pictures taken too. She is darling!

Holland needed in on the action. 

I had to do some with all three of them. Obviously.

I love this girl! We are so lucky to have her in our family!

Eliza Hits Double Digits!

 Well, it happened. My little baby turned 10 years old! I can't hardly believe it! First, that I have been a mother for 10 years?! You'd think I would have figured out to do it better by now. Second, how is she 10 years old already?! Eliza is funny, smart, spiritual, compassionate, responsible, a hard worker, kind, and a blessing to our family. I have said this before, but I really believe that we were blessed with such an amazing girl in part due to the faith we showed in having a baby so young in life. She is a tender mercy to us as parents.

Her birthday was on a Sunday this year and definitely a theme of the day that day was food. She wanted three yummy meals. In all honesty, her appreciating good food is something I love about her so I can't blame her for wanting good stuff. For breakfast she had German pancakes with blueberry sauce. Lunch was fresh green bean salad with breadsticks. Dinner was lasagna with steamed broccoli, and she picked a delicious cherry pie from Costco for dessert. I know, as a rule I don't buy dessert but it simplified out day of cooking. Everything was pretty excellent, if I do say so myself. :) 

In the afternoon we went to the temple grounds and took photos. I'll post those later. Then, we came home for dinner and presents with Grandpa. Eliza received nice pillow case covers for some decorative pillows on her bed, magnetic beads, a spiralgraph, a birthday dress and cardigan, shell from Miriam, journal, and crochet stuff. 

Eliza also received a huge yummy cupcake from the primary. It was really sweet.

We decided this year to throw her a birthday party at our house. Unfortunately as you can see in the above picture, she came down with pink eye just two days before her scheduled party date. We postponed a week and the whole gaggle of girls came to our house last night. We invited all the girls in her school class plus Sadie from her church class. They actually all came, even Kaylee whose birthday was that very day! We started out the evening with Costco pizza, fruit, and carrots. This was the cutest part of the evening to me because they all wanted to tell me things and kept raising their hands to be called on. It was really cute! 

After eating we played games: And Then and Pie Face. Both were hits! And Then is a story writing game we got from William for Christmas. It is basically when you take turns writing a line in the story without knowing what others wrote before you. There were a lot of bathroom, kissing, prison, and stealing jokes. Then, Pie Face is always a good time.

After games we had birthday rice crispy treats that are normal rice crispies with extra marshmallows and Fruity Pebbles to add color. Then, they watched Horton Hears a Who on our new big screen. We unfortunately didn't start it on time so it was right at the climax of the show when the parents started showing up to pick up their kiddos. It was a pretty solid choice though for a movie because it is funny for that age group, but also fine for my sensitive girls. It is also came out a few years ago so it seemed new to almost all of those girls. Win! 

I felt good about the the party and satisfied that everyone seemed to have fun even though we didn't rent out a big facility or spend a lot of money on her party (I guess we did buy a TV but that wasn't just for her party). There was a super uncomfortable moment when one girl made an inappropriate joke, but other than that, it was great. We gave out Unicorn popcorn with a Redbox gift code as a party favor. It was funny to hear the kids ask, "What is Redbox?" 

Happy 10th birthday wonderful Eliza girl!!!