EMBER TURNS 12!!
TWELVE! Wow! Only one more year till this girl of ours is a teenager. So wild to think about! We love watching Ember grow and mature through life. She impresses and challenges us daily. And we love getting to be the ones who parent her through life.
At age 12, Ember is about 56 inches tall and weighs right around 70 pounds. Ember has her own room in the Belle Springs house that we moved into this past year. She really enjoys it and is especially excited to have her own bathroom. Ember goes into her room when the boys go to bed around 7:45-8:00 each night but she stays up till 8:30 on school nights and 9:00 on the weekends. She really enjoys sleeping in when she is able and will often sleep past 8:00 on the weekends. Ember continues to call her Daddy to her room each night to "touch her fingers" and say goodnight one last time. We sing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" each night for her at bedtime and she still listens to a CD to fall asleep.
Ember is a very special girl! Most things come easily to her and she has a very efficient mind. She loves being around friends and she often helps them with school work and homework. She looks for ways to serve her teachers and her classmates. She strives to be the best at things that she does and works hard. I do not have to remind her to take care of her school work or chores because she does it all on her own. She continues to keep her room neat and tidy and has a place for everything. Ember is a natural leader. She loves to have fun and be silly. She is imaginative and is either playing great with her brothers or too easily annoyed with them.
Ember has many favorite things! She still spends the majority of her free time reading. I keep trying to find new books/series that she might be interested in since she flies through them so quickly. She has just started reading the Harry Potter series for the second time around. Ember loves being active and playing sports. She will ride her bike or rollerblade around the house. She still loves climbing trees, swimming, ice skating, and doing the obstacles at Buffalo Park while walking around the loop. She played soccer for her school last fall and played really well as a 5th grader with and against almost all 6th-8th graders. She played volleyball again in the fall with her school and improved dramatically. One random day, Reece and her decided to do a triathlon of sorts. They figured out the distance from our garage to the end of our fence line and tracked themselves till they rollerbladed, ran, and biked 3 miles each! She loves going to Levitate and practicing gymnastic skills that she has learned and trying new ones on the trampolines. Ember is old enough to hunt now and has enjoyed the challenge of hunting javelina and turkey. She hasn't gotten either yet but likes the challenge and enjoys the camping experience that comes along with it. Mexico is still one of the top places on her "favorite things" list. Her favorite things to do there are build sandcastles/houses in the sand using things she finds on the beach, boogie boarding, looking for shells and creating a restaurant using various shells and seaweed types. A close second to Mexico are definitely theme parks. This year, we happened to go to Disney World and Disneyland. She loves all the big rollercoasters and rides. Ember enjoys Lake Powell and jumping off cliffs or the top of the houseboat. She has enjoyed going to Wyldlife this fall - which is a Young Life meeting geared towards middle schoolers. They get together and play silly games, sing a few songs, and hear a devotion from one of the leaders. Ember still loves school and enjoys going. She loves her math class since there are only 4 kids in it since it is fairly advanced. She also really enjoys art and S.T.E.M. Ember also loves helping out with younger kids and she is great at it! She volunteers with me in the nursery at church each month and helped out with our churches VBS this last summer. When we are at Levitate or the park, she is drawn to helping watch and play with younger children. The kids love her and the parents appreciate the helping hand. Ember still eats most things and enjoys most meals. Some of her favorites are: over easy egg on avocado toast with everything bagel seasoning, egg burrito, yogurt, chicken nuggets, cheese crisps, jalapeño-garlic olives, grapes, berries, seaweed, pizza, ribs, soup, brisket, pulled pork, and pasta salad with mozzarella balls, salami, and black olives in it.
Ember continues to move more and more away from toys as she gets older. Besides books, there are other things that she enjoys doing. She consistently plays with her Tamagotchi with Reece. They can send each other gifts and do playdates on those. She has pulled out her sewing machine and made some things with that recently. She enjoys painting her nails and got a gel nail polish set for her birthday this year. Ember loves to sing and is often making up songs and singing them or singing songs that she has memorized all the lyrics to. She got some Heishi clay beads and made some bracelets and anklets for herself and others. She took a knitting class at school in 5th grade and enjoyed making pot holders and scarves with the skills she learned there. She will still pull out Legos when in the right mood and build a whole city with those. Ember also still enjoys Paint with Sticker books. She uses her imagination to create games for her and her brothers to play at the house - stores, King Kade, etc. She also often plays Gaga ball with the boys in their room and practices trick shots with the little indoor basketball hoop. Ember enjoys card games and plays Euchre with the other older kids while camping. She still likes Solitaire and Uno. She will play Monopoly and Settlers of Catan often as well. Reece and her will also practice making card towers.
As with every human, Ember has weaknesses and struggles as well as her many strengths. Ember tends to have a hard time with correction. She often has a justification. She has a hard time focusing on her part in the situation. She continues to dislike being rushed but thankfully her time management has improved and it happens much less often. Ember doesn't like having to go to bed earlier when we are camping or in a hotel and she needs to go to bed at the same time as her younger brothers. She sometimes struggles when she isn't the center of attention and will start doing annoying things to try and get the attention of those around her. And she dislikes when her brothers constantly make loud, obnoxious noises - which happens quite often, unfortunately. Her mother dislikes it as well ;)
It often amazes me to see the rate at which kids tend to grow and learn. Ember is no exception to this. In the realm of physical growth, Ember's volleyball improved significantly during her season. She became a consistent underhand server, an accurate bumper and an aggressive diver to get the ball. She also learned how to do a back handspring with the help of one of my friends who used to do gymnastics. Academics continue to come easy for Ember. She is still in a math class 2 grade levels up and is in an advanced ELA class. She qualified to go on to the ACSI spelling bee but ended up not doing it because it was the same weekend as her javelina hunt. She has written a few 5 paragraph essays this year with very little help. We do see emotional growth in Ember as well. We also see some new challenges coming down the pike as well as she gets closer and closer to her teenage years. As mentioned earlier, she has improved at staying calm and being ready on time when it is time to leave. She has grown in dealing with certain things that are out of her control. She previously had a big meltdown over something getting spilled on one of her favorite shirts. This happened again more recently and she shrugged it off and said "It'll wash out." She has good days and bad days in having patience and grace towards her brothers and us, her parents. There are glimpses of hope where she handles the situation with kind words and patience and other times where she jumps to frustration and irritation immediately. She continues to grow spiritually - not only in her knowledge of the Bible but also in her understanding of what living like Christ actually looks like. Her hearts desire continues to be to help others and be kind. She gets upset when she has a hard day and wants God to help her do better. She loves singing worship songs and listens to the sermon each week at church. She continues to memorize her Bible verses at school each week and we pray these are graven on her heart for the rest of her life. She has been working through a devotional workbook on 2 Timothy on her own time and gets excited when a new concept in the Bible suddenly makes sense to her.
God made a special one when he knit Ember together. She has so many gifts and strengths that she can use to bless those around her and to further the kingdom of God. We pray that her heart's desire stays focused on this end goal as she continues to grow and mature each year. We love having a front row seat to be able to watch the young woman that she is turning into. We can't wait to see what the future holds. We love you, Ember!
BIRTHDAY ACTIVITIES:
Chia seed pudding for breakfast :)
