Serenity’s Birthday Update
Serenity is 8 years old! She is growing into such a kind, thoughtful, amazing girl. I am so lucky to be her Mama. She is also growing REALLY tall. Combined with getting several adult teeth, she’s looking so grown up! But she still snuggles in bed with me every morning when she wakes up, and cuddles in my rocking chair sometimes too. She reads books that I enjoy reading too, and she gets so lost in them Eric laughs and says “Earth to Serenity,” which is just what my family would say to me when I was reading in my own little world. She loves to tell silly jokes, make up songs, and loves nature, fairies, and swinging. Telling Stories. Asking questions. Doing math with Daddy, including multi-variable algebra and multiplication tables. There are so many wonderful things about her it’s hard to know where to start! But I like to keep a record of her favorite things, so I will try =) She really enjoys computer games. It’s fun to watch when one captures her focus. She finds something interesting and zooms in on it, and lives and breathes it for awhile, until she finds her next challenge. Her favorite computer game this year was definitely Animal Jam, hence her birthday party. She especially likes Overflow and Pest Control of the mini-games on Animal Jam. They are logic and strategy games. But she also spent a lot of time on different apps, like tunnel town and nibblers. She also played Skylanders.
Serenity loves nature. She will collect rocks or leaves or just revel in being outside. She will slip outside and swing in the swing and enjoy the breeze. When we were in Tahoe, she made a nature club in our yard, collecting lots of goodies and arranging them in pretty designs. When we visited Abbey she and Maggie made homes by their pond with big sticks and branches. She loves hiking on Turkey Mountain, and told me that when the trees touch overhead it’s like a doorway into fairyland. I love listening to her stories =)
Serenity still loves reading. Rainbow Magic Fairies are still one of her favorites, although she finishes them very quickly. She was a Nora the Arctic Fox Fairy for Halloween. A new author we discovered this year was Jessica Day George (Tuesdays in the Castle and Dragon Slipper). She and I both loved those! She also read The Hobbit. That little adventure began after we played our Lord of the Rings board game. Serenity and Donovan wanted to know the whole story, so Eric and I gave them a very abbreviated version during a road trip to OKC. After we got back we went straight to the book store so she could get The Hobbit. I admit I wasn’t sure if she’d read it all the way through alone, she still sometimes gets nervous at things that are tense and dramatic, but she loved it. And Eric occasionally read aloud to all of us, and his Gollum voice is excellent. She also loves animal adventures like Starfire, in which all the characters are pegasi. Oooh, she also loves the Sisters 8. She still reads non-fiction books, like her Atlases and space encyclopedias. At one point she was very into Pokemon, and she asked me to get her the Pokemon handbook from the book fair. I was a bit skeptical, since she didn’t actually play the card game, but I bought the book and she read it cover to cover. This was months before Pokemon Go, but she may find all that research handy now =) She also read Skylander handbooks.
Serenity loves school. She even enjoys homework still. The things I heard the most about this year were all the grammar jingles Mrs. Hovenesian taught her. They were fun little songs to teach her what verbs or other parts of speech are. She also loved her math homework, and all the books they read.
In extra-curricular activities, Serenity was in Girl Scouts this year, and I was her troop leader. That was a challenge, but so very fun to get to spend time with Serenity and nearly all the girls in her class. She loves Girl Scouts, from the crafts, to the service projects, and spending time with friends. She also took ballet. She is very flexible and graceful, and she definitely preferred the lyrical music of ballet. She got to do a butterfly dance for her recital, and it was beautiful to watch. She enjoys ballet, but she’s not serious about it, so we are moving on to piano now.
She plays games, but prefers the cooperative games like Forbidden Desert. She sometimes prefers to watch games, kibitzing and reading the rules.
She and Donovan are best friends. They are always coming up with their own games, pretending to be tigers, or pets. They make their own little hideaways, often in my closet. She often climbs up to the top shelf in my closet and just lays there, enjoying a little solitude and being up high.
She loves swimming! She’s pretty confident of her skills, and hangs out at the deep end, diving to the bottom of the pool and swimming all the way across it. We took the year off of swim lessons, but we are going back next year so she can work on her form and just enjoy being in the water after our neighborhood pool closes. She also loves riding around on her scooter. She has a new bike, but is still pretty hesitant about actually using it, but she loves going fast on the scooter. She will ride around and around the living room on the indoor one, and sometimes on the plasma car.
She likes to play dress-up, especially during Game Nights or when friends visit. Her closet always looks like a tornado hit it, since they go through lots of outfits. Her favorite of the dresses is probably the Snow White costume she got from Raegan.
And the month by month photos =)
