Mindy's 14!

This summer, right after I got home from Louisiana, we celebrated Mindy's birthday.  She turned 14.

Here are some great things about Mindy:

1.  She loves to share her life with anyone who will listen.  Some people are open books; some people aren't.  Mindy is definitely in the open book category.

2.  She loves to read.  Her favorite activity is to go to the library and load up on lots of books.  Then she comes home and tries to read them non-stop.  She especially loves fantasy with dragons and princesses and superheroes.  She LOVES Harry Potter and has read the whole series 7 times.  Whenever she has run out of new books, she starts reading the Harry Potter series again.

3.  She isn't a dessert hog.  Mindy is actually not a dessert fan.  One year for her birthday she wanted watermelon instead of cake.  This year she requested trifle.  There are a few sweet treats she likes but her favorite snack is a bag of Doritos which her brother Jan gave her this year.

4.  She loves to sing.  When she has a job to do, she likes nothing better than to put on a CD of Vocal Point or Noteworthy and sing along as loud as she can.  She especially loves Disney songs.  She also loves playing a Disney/movie song on the piano and singing along as part of her practicing.

5. She's cheerful most of the time.  She loves to laugh and be a little silly.

6.  She's creative.  For the last several Halloweens, she has dreamed up her own costume and put it together.  This year she decided to be a character of her own invention.  She is in the middle of writing her own book.  She is definitely our right-brained child.

7.   Closely related to her creativity, she's an artist.  She LOVES to draw and will frequently be drawing when she's supposed to doing her math which she does not love.  My husband and I and most of our children would rather do math than art but Mindy is the complete opposite.  She's pretty good at drawing and almost completely self-taught.

8.  She's becoming responsible.  Every morning she is good about getting ready for the day, cleaning up her room, doing her job, and making her lunch before she sits down to breakfast, reading while she eats.  She has started mowing our lawn and a neighbor's lawn this summer.  It's definitely not her favorite thing to do and it's not easy for her but she'll do it.  She is also learning to cook for our family.  Once a week she helps make dinner.  She enjoys making spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese from scratch and a few other main dishes.  She is becoming quite competent at that.

9.  Mindy is resilient.  Sometimes she gets upset and disappointed and she definitely shares that information with you.  But after a short while, she gets over it and is back to being the cheerful soul she usually is.  Mindy had a challenging beginning to her life.  She was born full-term but just 4.5 lbs with a tumor that had to be removed right away followed by pyloric stenosis.  So she spent her first 4 weeks of life at Primary Children's Hospital.  She has always been very small for her age but she's catching up and packs a lot of personality in a small frame.

10.  She's a good big sister to Camille.  We're really glad that Camille and Mindy can be friends with each other.  They don't always get along but when they do, it's great.

We're glad Mindy's in our family!