Happy 13th Cassie!

Today Cassie is 13 years old.  Wow!  I have a teenager in my home.  I've had a hard time deciding what to write about her for this special day, mainly because she now insists on reading my blog before I publish it.  Then, I decided that Cassie's life right now is really about finding balance.  She's trying to balance schoolwork with her extracurricular activities.  She's also trying to decide how much time she should spend with her family and how much time with friends. 

Cassie's life is also about me trying to find a balance.  I don't always know when to treat her like a child and when to treat her like a youngish adult.  I don't always know how much freedom to give her.  And, I often don't know how hard to push her.  But,all in all, I think she and I are both handling "13" pretty well.  Here's a little photo walk to document the past year:

Cassie the teenager

Cassie really loves being with family.  Although she experienced a lot of sadness with the loss of two grandparents this year, she has been blessed with the opportunity to spend a lot of time with family in Colorado, Florida and Ohio.  For Thanksgiving, she insisted that we wear Pilgrim hats.  You can see that not everyone was willing.

I love this photo of Cassie.  She gets really self conscious about having her photo taken now.  So, I snapped this one when she wasn't looking.  Afterwards, I realized that she was oblivious to me because she was busy texting. 

Cassie continues to follow her passion - music, dance and art.  She is the concert mistress of the school orchestra and also plays in the county's Youth Orchestra.  She was the only 7th grade violinist at her school to qualify for the All County Orchestra.  She and I sometimes argue about practicing.  But, I'm really proud of her accomplishments. 

Cassie continues to work hard at school.  She won 1st place at her school science fair and went on to win 3rd place at the regional fair.  Last fall, Duke University invited her to participate in their "talent search" by taking the SAT exams early.  She was excited to participate so Les and I decided to let her try.  On test day, Cassie was the only student who wasn't a high school senior.  I was worried about leaving her, then surprised when I watched her stride off confidently with the older students.  I shed a few tears on the way home because she seemed to be growing up so quickly.  Cassie scored well enough to participate in online summer courses at Duke.  However, we decided that none of us are quite ready for that. 

 

 Cassie loves all living things.  She is currently feeding a feral cat twice a day in hopes of eventually taming him.  In this photo, she is shaking snow off tree limbs to keep them from breaking.

Cassie loves her role as big sister.  She helps Lacey lay out her school clothes every evening and is always eager to help Lacey with homework.  She is learning to accept and appreciate the ways in which she and Lacey are different.

Cassie still loves clothes and is happiest at the thrift shop.  In this photo, she is selecting a Christmas dress.  In the bottom photo, she is selecting boots to wear with the dress!

When Cassie was a few months old, a dear friend was visiting.  I asked my friend if the love I was feeling for my newborn child would fade as she got older.  "Oh, no," my friend assured me, "Each day will just get better and better."  You know what?  My friend was right.  Happy Birthday, Cassie!

At a Loss

I haven't blogged in so long that I'm almost at a loss for words.  "At a loss" defines the chaotic state of my life right now.  On Monday, the moving van arrived from Colorado, full of 500 cubic feet of cherished possessions from my parent's home.   In anticipation of this big event, we cleaned house.    The garage is so full of items to be donated that we have to use the front door.  The boxes and furniture from the moving van all landed in the living room.  For the past few evenings, we have been unpacking boxes, sliding boxes out of the way to place furniture, and sliding furniture out of the way to stack boxes.  Clearly, we are at a loss for space.

It's that time of year when we're getting ready for dance recitals, orchestra concerts, final exams and birthdays.  Add unpacking to all this and you can see that I've also been short on time.  I've been sliding a pile of unfolded laundry from one corner of our bedroom to the other for the past week.  On Tuesday, when I got to work I realized that my shirt was on backwards.  As if that wasn't bad enough, three hours passed before I had a chance to go in the bathroom and fix it.  Yesterday afternoon found me cleaning my purse out at the gas station.  My gas tank was almost empty.  So, I had a good chunk of time to work on my purse.  You have to admit, that was a pretty good use of my time.  I haven't had time to do laundry in so long that I actually stopped to buy a new outfit on my way home so that I would have something to wear tomorrow.   I was sitting at a stoplight feeling a little sorry for myself when I happened to glance over at the car next to me.  The female driver was plucking her eyebrows while she waited for the light to change.  Ah yes, things could be worse.

I took a short break to sit down and blog.  I'm still enjoying the therapeutic relief that comes from publicly poking fun at myself!