Sophie's 8th Birthday

My baby girl is 8!  I know everyone says this, but it't true that I don't know how this happened.  What I do know is that Sophie is an absolute joy!  She has had such a great year and has grown in so many ways.  Everyone says she is me made over and that is true in a lot of ways, but don't be fooled.  She has a lot of her daddy in her.

She woke up to presents on Sunday morning.

Sophie has always had an interest in art.  This is fostered a lot at her school and she has learned about a lot of artists and techniques.  This is all her daddy since I don't have an artistic bone in my body!  So we got her a portable easel to take with us to Colorado in a few weeks so she can paint and draw some landscapes.

John Curtis picked out a Fur Real pet for her from him.  Sophie has a special relationship with her brother or "Buddy" as she calls him.  Some days they can play happily together for hours in their rooms.  Of course they fight sometimes too, but it never lasts long.  They can't handle being apart for too long.

Taylor is on sabbatical for the next 6 weeks so he attended another church on Sunday while the kids and I went to our church.  We rushed out of church to meet Taylor at the movie theater for a noon showing of the London Ballet in Romeo & Juliet.  See, she isn't all me.  She and her daddy really enjoy the ballet and were able to happily sit through 3 hours of it!  I was happy to take JC home for some mindless Phineas and Ferb watching!  Sophie's love of ballet and dancing is something that has taken me by surprise.  The precision and striving for perfection in it really fits her personality.  She does well with the predictabiltiy of ballet.  What surprises me is how gifted she is at it.  She didn't get that from either one of us, although maybe it was another path Taylor could have taken.

After the ballet, the kids and I had a fancy birthday dinner.  As usual Sophie requested shrimp alfredo.  John Curtis picked out the flowers.

She is growing up so fast and we are very proud of the person she is.  She has my sensitive spirit mixed with Taylor's confidence, my love of books and writing in addition to Taylor's love of math.  She scored higher than 5th grade on her end of the year math assessment, which definitely comes from Taylor.  She loves all different kinds of music like her daddy, but has my singing voice (sorry!), and she LOVES crafts of  all kinds.  As you can tell, we think our 8 year old is pretty wonderful!  Happy Birthday, Sophie!