The young lady

On this day where you turn 10 into 11 - even though I'm pretty sure you made me a deal last year that you would turn double digits but then stop right there - you amaze me. Like my mother, I hope you forget the times where I speak too sharply and you clam up with your thoughts, and remember our every-morning hugs and smiles.

I love how you are the best example of every-vegetable-under-the-sun eating for your siblings around here. Way better than me. How you hold up the snow pea - which had rarely-to-never graced the dinner table - and just popped it in. "Hm. Pretty good."

You and me and Spotify could go for hours. Sometimes we do, on Friday nights when your dad's patience with Tangled soundtrack songs runs out and he requests Eric Clapton or Rod Stewart and then we launch into rabbit trails of songs that you love or hate. When you have your own computer, you say, you're not filling playlists with Irish music.

You are nearing the thousands in pictures taken since you got your camera last year, and it's almost always nature that catches your eye. Sometimes people - usually sister subjects; but mostly the beauty of God's creation and close ups of things in the light that you like the look of. I like seeing how you see things.

I'm so sorry about art camp. You don't always like trying new activities with new people, and I did my best mom-gently-pushes routine and convinced you to say yes. I just knew it would be the thing for you, in my gut. And by the morning of, you were nervous but almost totally bought in. Excited, even. Telling your sisters what kinds of things you were going to get to make and try. And no one was there. Cancelled. Thank you for your maturity and grace in dealing with disappointment.

I love how much time and thought you put into your birthday menu, and how this year you decided to go easy on the vegetables for the sake of your siblings. That was very thoughtful. You are a "foodie", and I can't wait to see how the Lord uses that in your life.

Happy birthday, DK.