We’re celebrating another birthday – this time for our favorite daughter!
And as she hits the big 19 and prepares to leave home – now more than ever, I want to create a snapshot of what she’s like right now.
She is my photo and video loving child. She is cut from my cloth and loves to document all the things. She helps layout my blog books, makes our annual 1 second videos, and makes a video for all the trips we have.
Because of her love of photos/videos, she is always running out of phone storage. Granted, she is on an older model of my hand-me-down phone and its half the storage I run on now. It’s the long running joke that her phone is glitching because she’s used all the space.
She loves playing the games on the Circle K app and loves to go redeem all of her free candy/chips/drinks. She even convinced all her friends to play with her and they would make regular runs to Circle K.
She loves Canes and Chipotle and she knows her dad is always willing to go to lunch with her.
She made it through her first three years of driving without an accident or ticket which we didn’t think would be the case.
She is motivated to make money (which didn’t really happen until after junior year when she started looking at the cost of college) – but she doesn’t love to spend money.
She is one with the water and would choose Lake Powell over almost every vacation. She lands regular 360s and is hoping to not lose all of it while she takes a short-ish break from surfing.
She has had naturally blonde hair since she was little. As she’s grown older it has started to darken some but with the amount of time she’s spent outside playing tennis it’s remained sun bleached. She hopes the blonde sticks around – I don’t think it will!
Her car is clean…her room is not.
And the boys get bugged that Hallie has her own bathroom and yet she still uses their bathroom to do her hair (because the mirror is bigger).
She’s coached tennis for a year now and Briggs is in on one of her classes and he loves it. In fact, all the kids love her and they are all sad they have to find a new coach soon. She’s teaching on her birthday and is making cotton candy to take to the kids.
She has kept a journal throughout high school documenting where she has seen God in her life. She has been typing it up so she can have a digital version when she serves a mission and has shared several of her entries with me and I’m so grateful she took the time to write them down – it is a treasure.
She is beautiful and kind at her core. She has a unique light and we’ve recognized people are drawn to her.
We have had so many tender moments lately together and emotions are bubbling just below the surface. Big changes are on the horizon and as exciting as they are, there’s also some nerves and anxiousness that come with it. Which leads to late night tears talking about all the things and they’ve been some of my favorite conversations.
Somehow she grew up on us and it’s been beautiful to witness.
Happy 19th!
