Serenity's Birthday Update — ChrissieEric.com

Serenity is 12! Her last year before she’s a teenager! I am so lucky to be her Mama. As I put on her birthday card, she is kind, snuggly, imaginative, determined, hilarious, a voracious reader, flexible, friendly, silly, thoughtful, intelligent, and awesome! I love her so much!

It’s been a crazy year, but wonderful in so many ways. I love that we spend so much time together, and Serenity still feels that her brother and sister are her best friends.

She reads so many books. She is definitely my daughter. She loves mythology, from any culture she can get. She still loves fantasy books, and tries to get ahold of any Wings of Fire books first. She read my Dragonsong and Dragonsinger books, and it was such a joy when she would fly down the stairs giggling and excited! She also loved the Tamora Pierce series about Daine and Alanna the Lioness. I was rereading them and she picked one up and she went through them so quickly she passed me! She has also been reading all of our graphic novels, like the Order of the Stick and Girl Genius. So much fun!!! For summer she did book projects, and when the library reopened for drive through pick up I had a ton of books on hold. She read the Kingdom of Ash and Briar and then put it right into my hands for me to read next, and she made an elicrin stone necklace like the magic users in the book had, and posted a book review to Facebook for her book club project. I love it!!!. She loves making up stories in her head, usually fan fiction about her favorite fictional worlds. She’s made new dragons in the Wings of Fire world, GemWings. She’s working now on a story about Warrior cats and she has several fun characters with detailed descriptions and backstories. I love it! I just wish she would write more down so I could read it, most of it is up in her head. =) She made dragon eggs to go with her story in various craft materials.

She suddenly adores her stuffed animals. She sleeps with nearly all of them at the same time! Lyra the Fox, Snowy the Snow Leopard, and her Otter Coco are the ones she loves the most though. She also loves sleeping in onesies!

She absolutely loved the show Nailed It this year. She asked to try one of the desserts, and made a really awesome emoji cake! She truly did nail it! She loved it so much we did it as part of her Sloth Sleepover birthday.

She loves school. She enjoyed dissecting an owl pellet in science, especially. She started band this year, but was not really a fan of practicing her clarinet. She definitely did not miss that when the pandemic called a halt! She adores Mrs. Patton, her main teacher, and helped sew weighted lap blankets for her class with me. She also really likes CPM math! Mrs. Cox is wonderful and we’re so excited she gets to have her as her classroom teacher next year. She thrived in virtual school. She discovered that she actually loves Chinese, and her Chinese handwriting is beautiful. It was just so much more fun to do Chinese when she was well rested from home. She loved getting to do things on her own schedule and after sleeping much later, even when she had a morning Zoom meeting she didn’t have to get up nearly as early. She still made projects for Creative Producers, and she researched the country Norway. She made a beautiful art project which hangs in our office now, and learned to make Kringla! She was a pandemic fairy and delivered some of these goodies to her classmates that live nearby.

Shaving cream art for Creative Producers

Creative Producers Zoom Screenshot! I LOVE this product! It turned out beautiful.

For after school activities, she took an improv class at Clark Youth Theater and she continued with Girl Scouts. This will be her last year, but she ended with her Bronze Award and enough Journeys to earn her Summit Award! Great work! She loved camping! She loved helping the Daisies, and she helped Maia with her very first cookie sale! They met their cookie goals and shared the prizes. After quarantine, she turned to musical theater, and led her siblings in song and dance routines they made up themselves. Serenity goes on bike rides or walks to the green belt for P.E. all the time. Sometimes with Donovan, sometimes with all of us, but often just by herself to enjoy nature. She and Eric have also ridden their bikes to Lillyan’s house and played outside with her friend.