MAY 2013 - EMILY

I was excited for Emily to get her 10 year pin for Girl Scouts and was surprised when my name was called  and I received one too!  Emily started in kindergarten and is now completing 9th grade so that makes ten for her.  My combined girl/adult years qualified me for mine.    The years are sliding by so quickly.  Seems like yesterday that I was carrying two babies around and holding troop meetings for Emily and her first grade troop mates.  By her third grade year, I was toting baby Eva around too and I couldn't manage it all so Emily moved into the troop she belongs to today.  Her troop leader is the most amazing person that if I told you all the things she does and has accomplished, you wouldn't believe me.  That she also happens to be one of the most kind and sincere people I have known makes me want to cry when I think of her.  I will always love Julie D.

Ems is finished her freshman year with a trip to regionals in track. Along with her varsity 4x4 team she made two trips to Elk  Grove this month in post season.  That is the weird thing about high school, the kids get to miss whole entire days of school to go participate in their sport.  I guess if I had ever played a sport I would know this but it is a surprise to me. The first time I ever teared up for one of my kids in an award ceremony the was just the other day. She was one of only 12 out of 70 kids on the track team to receive an academic athlete award for her grades and that put me over the edge. She really works hard this girl.  I fuss at her so much.  She deserves all of it, don't misunderstand.  She can be a major PAIN.  But she is also amazing and she surprises me at every twist. Not just with her athletic talents but sometimes with spontaneous acts of kindness, sometimes just with the ways I see her "getting it" and by it I mean life lessons and big things like that.  It's weird to watch someone grow from their very first breath of life.  You don't actually watch it so much as marvel as the big chunks that have passed and marvel some more, at pretty well spaced intervals, with the newness of that person as she changes.  I can almost not believe that I once had this little teeny (big actually, nine point four whole pounds of her) baby and now she is this bigger than me almost fifteen year old person that is sometimes a pain, often lovely, and always awesome.  No better pain to love than this though.  I'm keeping her.