Our Felicity: 8 Years Old

It's hard to believe that our first baby is eight years old! Felicity Renee lives up to her name and brings us more happiness than words can say. She is many things but confident, smart, motivated, hard working, persistent, creative and very social are some that stand out the most.

Felicity loves school and all of the learning and socializing that happens there. She's convinced her second grade teacher is a genius and always has a new story from the second grade lunch, classroom, or playground scene. Her teacher tells us that Felicity's classmates come to her for help and that she's eager to give it.
Music and Art continue to be a joy for Felicity. She loved playing Velveeta in her first grade musical "The Cheese Stands Alone", and she's always singing songs she's learning in class. She's hoping to play the violin, and she somehow manages to know every word to all of the songs on the radio. Felicity enjoys learning new art techniques and spends a good amount of her free time drawing, painting and coloring.

This summer, reading became a real love for our girl...or maybe Harry Potter became the real love. She read the whole series between the last two weeks of school and summer's end! I love that she shares the love of reading and will read to her brother and sister as they are going to bed at night. 

We are so incredibly proud of how brave Felicity was this spring as she took on swim lessons for the first time. It was challenging. We prayed a lot. She persevered and was able to meet her goal by September. It's such a joy to see her enjoy the water and bob her heart out!

Felicity is so grown up in many ways, but she still loves to play. Legos are one of her favorites. Her big present this year was the Harry Potter Great Hall Lego set, and she begged and begged to work with Daddy on it every day until it was done. She's also really good at using all of the jumbled up pieces from various sets to create a whole new world. I love her creativity and patience in the process. She also enjoys playing LOLs, Baby Merlissa and Husband (and Taunaties), and Barbies with Moriah, and she can't go to sleep without Teddy and Moosie (one under each arm).
This spring when Mommy was huge and uncomfortable (waiting for Zina) we started watching Just Add Magic as a family. The show really inspired Felicity in the kitchen. She created her own cookbook of magic recipes and asked us almost every day to let her and Moriah try their hand at cooking them!

Something we can't leave out is Felicity's continuing obsession with the KC Chiefs. If there was a queen of Chiefs Kingdom I think she would be in the running. She not only loves Chiefs games but now keeps up with other teams' records to see how we match up. One of my favorite quotes from our girl was "yeah, I think we're gonna win on Sunday. Trubisky and his crew aren't as hot this year." (insert smiley cry face and sorry to all our Bears fan friends!). We took her to her first game in December and a preseason game in August. Sadly, they lost the game in December at the very end because of a two point conversion by the Chargers. I'll never forget seeing her sweet little face melt into tears. Thankfully we won the preseason game so she no longer thinks she might have been bad luck ;).
The biggest blessing in our sweet girl's life is watching the love she has for Jesus continue to grow. She is so faithful to hide His word in her heart and flies through the AWANA verses with great joy. It's a gift to watch her apply the truths she's learning at Sunday school as she works through God time cards in between Sundays. At the end of first grade her teacher wrote us a note that said Felicity shined God's light so bright. We were amazed because that was our prayer for the school year, that God would shine His light upon her. Before second grade started, she wrote out a beautiful prayer for the year. We're not even half way through, and God has already answered so many things: she has a new friend, jogging laps in P.E. are getting better, and she couldn't be happier with her teacher.
Felicity enjoys her church family so much that she doesn't want to sit with her own family at Wednesday night dinners! She's eager to be baptized, and we are eager to see the good work God has ready for her in days to come.

When she grows up she wants to live in Paris or next door to us (we have to paint it something other than yellow first). I asked Felicity some things she'd like to accomplish in her next year. She said she'd like to learn to do a cartwheel and something that "probably isn't possible but..." she'd really love to learn to throw a football as far as Patrick Mahomes. When she grows up she wants to be a scientist, artist, ballerina or an Aldi worker. I just love all of these responses because they're so our girl...Eight years old, dreaming big with a good head on her shoulders.