Elizabeth is 10!

We had another big milestone around here when our oldest entered the second decade of her life!  It's still hard to believe.  We had a fun time celebrating, though.

She wanted to make her own cake this year:

I love that she put a book on it.  :)

We had a delicious breakfast of German pancakes with berries.  Then it was off to school.  I brought her some cowboy cookies to share with her class.  She asked for "bread bowl soup" as she calls it, which is this delicious cauliflower soup that a friend made for us after Nate was born, complete with bread bowls.  The other kids weren't too thrilled about this choice but Joe and I were :).  Then, we opened presents.

Elizabeth had begged for a pet.  It was funny to see her birthday list of basically any animal she could think of to write down, with certain preferences starred.  Sadly, her parents are kind of anti-pet (at least for now) but we did relent and decided on some fish to start:

She was still excited:

She picked out three goldfish.  Sadly, one died soon after it came home (poor Crimson).  We're all slowly learning how to take care of the fish.  

 She got a movie she loves--Born to Be Wild (one of those Disney nature movies):

She also got an ice skating trip to take place the next day:

Plus a cool Hogwarts shirt:

The next day we drove up to the closest ice skating rink in Sun Valley.  We weren't sure it would be worth the drive but it ended up being a really fun day.

Here's our little ice skater having a blast:

This guy did a complete 180 after the last time we tried ice skating:

He was so brave and ended up being a pretty good skater.  He took some tough falls but kept skating.

Natalie lasted as long as Elizabeth out on the rink (much longer than the rest of us) and improved a lot, too:

Eli enjoyed Joe and I basically carrying him around the rink a few times until our backs couldn't take it anymore.  Then he enjoyed eating snacks on the sidelines with Dad (who isn't much of a fan of ice skating).

We couldn't resist taking some pictures here:

Except Nate...he could resist.  :)

Elizabeth has had a great year and has learned a lot.  She is still a voracious reader and lately we have been able to talk her into pushing herself a little more in the kinds of books she reads.  She read The Hobbit, almost all of the Anne of Green Gables books, a lot of the Diary of Anne Frank (not sure if she finished it) and has made good progress in Little Women.  Because of this, she has quite the vocabulary and I love it when I hear her say some sophisticated-sounding word in normal conversation.  You just can tell that she is beginning to understand some complex things a lot more and it is fun to have discussions with her.  Of course, we are still working on teaching her moderation, even in her reading.  We found out not long after we moved here in parent/teacher conferences that she was reading during her recesses.  Her teacher asked if we wanted to allow that and we said no.  I think her teacher now lets her read during one recess but not the other.  She is making more friends so I think that is helping.  I know well the relief of escaping into a book when life gets hard (since I tend to do that myself) and so I'm trying to be patient.  Elizabeth is really extraordinarily brave.  I think my kids have already had way more experiences with adjusting to change and new experiences than I had by the time I left for college.

Anyway, she does enjoy getting some energy out, too.  She still loves to climb, swim, hike, and ride her bike.   One of the things that I love about Elizabeth is that she isn't in any hurry to grow up (at least yet).  She still loves to play pretend with her younger siblings and I love to hear the scenarios that they come up with.   She loves to play Wii with Nate.  She is so kind to Eli and is very responsible with him.  We're starting to slowly transition into letting her babysit a little bit.  

She loves Greek mythology (thanks to Percy Jackson) and knows way more about it than I do.  She also loves all things Egyptian and even copied down hieroglyphics for fun one day.  She still loves crafting and sewing in particular.  She can be a bit of a perfectionist about some of the things she makes and doesn't like it when they don't turn out how she was hoping.  She loves to cook.  If I could get my act together and start teaching her how to make more things she would gladly take over some of that.  She is an excellent salad maker, at least.

She is thoughtful, inquisitive, kind, responsible, fun-loving, independent, and we love her with all our hearts.  Happy Birthday, Lizzy!