Fifteen

That's the age my oldest just turned.

Having a baby in the house has made me more reflective on when she was a baby. Hard to believe it has been fifteen years since this happy, go lucky girl with a little bit of dramatic flair was born.

 

 Having a teenager is a lot of fun. 

A few weeks ago Karebear came downstairs and exclaimed, "My family is the greatest. Not only do we still have our Christmas lights up but we have them on".  Who knew it was so easy to achieve greatness. (To my husbands credit he did take them down last weekend-just needed a little warm weather to motivate him).

The key to teenagers is pretty simple. Money. One evening Karalee was commenting on how if dad did that in public she would claim she didn't know him. In jest we said well if you don't claim us then I guess we don't have to pay for anything. She was pretty willing to change her story.

All kidding aside having a teenager is great. Karebear is excellent with her younger brother and sisters and ever willing to baby sit. I couldn't handle having a newborn without her. So nice to be able to run kids places and be able to leave the baby home in her care.

Having a teenager brings back a lot of memories. Such as Solo &  Ensemble night. Oh the hours of practice to learn a piece. The nerves of playing for the first time in front of an adjudicator. Then the time to wait for your score.

Then there is pep band. Karebear hates pep band but it was required. I think she enjoyed going to the basketball games but just didn't like having to be part of the band. Not really into the whole band geek side of pep band.

How about learning to drive. She recently downloaded the driver manual onto her Kindle and is hoping to take the test to get her learners permit this week. I'm sure she'll soon have dad convinced to let her practice driving on the way to school each morning.

It also fun to see her experience things different then her parents. She is taking ASL ( American Sign Language) and plans to next year. It is pretty common to see her hands going whenever she is talking to us. I assume it is actually real words that she signing.

 Of course we could of guessed since her hands

 have always been very useful to her. 

She used to put herself to sleep sucking on two fingers

She is a great friend and a lot of fun to talk with. Every dinner we are blessed to hear lots of funny things that happened in school. Oh and need we mentioned a great student (still sporting a 4.0 since junior high).

 She wanted to learn how to make pie 

so spent the morning with dad making this b-day treat.