11.5 years old!

Six months from today our daughter will turn twelve years old! She hasn't hit the big growth spurt yet that many others her age have already gone through in terms of her height, but her shoe size has certainly been changing rapidly. She's been growing her hair longer. If she would do something with her hair, I wouldn't mind, but since she doesn't, I personally would rather her have a shorter hair style because her hair looks messy very soon after she brushes it. But it's her hair not mine, so I am letting her grow it out. One of these days I assume I won't have to encourage her to brush and/or shampoo her hair. I know she misses taking showers. I don't think I'll have to encourage her to take a shower at Grandma's house tomorrow! She's very happy that she has a few years off until she gets another shot. She just asked the pediatrician about that last Friday when Ian had his annual physical.

Here are a few of her favorites at 11.5 years old...

1. Spending time with her cousins. She and Rachel talk at night via FaceTime several times a week most of the time. The cousins she most enjoys interacting with include Joshua, Andrew, Jenna, Susie, Rachel, and Adam.

2. Holding either of our guinea pigs. A woman in our church who owns a pet boarding and grooming center about five minutes from our house already knows that Nadia wants to work there once she turns sixteen years old. Nadia would love it if we got a rabbit, cat, and/or a dog.

3. Listening to radio dramas. In the past she enjoyed listening to all the episodes of Jonathan Park; we only borrowed those from a library so she can't listen to them again. My dad got her a membership that enables her to listen to ANY episode of Adventures in Odyssey. She loves those, and I also purchased all the Brinkman adventures CDs. She has listened to those missionary adventures more than once. One of her gifts today was the latest season of the Brinkman Adventures.

4. Listening to Christian contemporary music. She listens to CDs, our local Christian radio station, and also uses her Echo Dot. If you want to play "name the artist" while listening to a Christian radio station, Nadia can do an excellent job of identifying an artist and the name of the song once she hears a small part of the song.

5. Watching the Cosby Show, Full House, and Brady Bunch. Those are her top three favorite shows at the moment. Recently she enjoyed watching the three Santa Clause movies for the first time on Disney+. She's bummed that we recently cancelled our membership with Hulu because she hadn't quite finished seeing all the episodes of Full House. We had been getting it for 99 cents a month for the past twelve months. I promised her that at some point we will get Hulu again, but this year we have Disney+. As a side note, it's rather sad to think that Bill Cosby is in jail and that will also probably be true for Lori Loughlin in the not so distant future. The DVD I gave her for Christmas was The Odd Life of Timothy Green. I got it at a yard sale before I had any knowledge of Disney+.

6. Playing on the iPad. Her favorite apps at the moment include Homescapes, Matchington, and Disney Crossyroad.

7. Reading the Mother Daughter Book club series. She's read a variety of books over the past six months including A Little Princess, Little Women, all seven Harry Potter books, all fourteen of the Whatever After books, and three Betsy-Tacy books, but the books she has reread the most often the past six months have been the ones from the Mother Daughter Book Club. Some of her gifts today included a large Mad Lib book (that I got for free from Kellogg's), the newest Cilla Lee-Jenkins book, newest Young Whit book, Shouting at the Rain, a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book, and the Great Gilly Hopkins. I love the fact that she loves to read!! Her love of things related to Harry Potter was evident in the gifts she received. I gave her a Hogwarts nightgown, water botte, and Hermione doll.
 Aunt Wendy gave her a map from Harry Potter.

8. Helping out at church. She operates the sound board during the youth service at 10:45 on Sunday mornings. She helps serve drinks or food in the youth group café before that service. She wants to resume helping in Kidzway periodically. She's excited about being a member of the Bible Bowl team starting in a couple of weeks, which will culminate in a competition in Oklahoma in July. She's been diligently working on memorizing the book of Hebrews! She says she's going to join the adult choir at church once she's in ninth grade. I'm looking forward to that!

9. Ice skating, roller skating, skiing, swimming, zip lining, rock climbing, and playing on a basketball team are some of her favorite physical activities. She had been borrowing Oliver's scooter this summer, but today she and Ian each got a scooter from Grandpa and Gubba. Now we have three scooters for our three kids.

10. Singing and acting. She enjoyed being in Lion King in August and singing in the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale this fall. She eagerly awaits the day she can be in a musical at our church or Christian school. I signed her up for an audition to be in Annie and then cancelled it as it seemed the rehearsals would conflict with ice skating lessons and Upward basketball. She's already planning on auditioning to be in Tuck Everlasting in November 2020 and hopes to be in Meadowbrook's musical in March 2021.

11. Going to camp. She enjoyed horseback riding camp, history camp, and Camp Good News this summer, but her favorite week of camp is definitely the week of overnight camp at Camp Susque! It seems no matter where we go, Nadia usually knows at least one of the kids whether it's from Meadowbrook, church, the homeschool group, Upward basketball, Camp Susque, etc. Earlier this month when we were aGreat Wolf Lodge, which is 90 minutes from our house, she recognized one family from the homeschool group and another girl from her Upward basketball team last year. 

12. Playing games. Her favorites include Bubble Talk, Apples to Apples, Racko, Suspend, Spot it, and Guesstures. I didn't give her a game this year, but I gave Oliver "Pickles to Penguins," and I believe that will also be right up her alley!

13. Eating ham and cheese hot pockets for lunch. Some of her other favorite foods include pizza, goulash, meatloaf, rigatoni and meatballs, tuna noodle casserole, deviled eggs, scrambled eggs, fried egg on a bagel, chips, cookies, candy, ice cream, cheesecake, apple pie, grapes, strawberries, cherries, plums, peaches, raspberries,

cheese crackers, soft pretzels, pretzel sticks, blueberries, clementines, hot chocolate, apple juice, macaroni and cheese, string cheese, fish sticks, meatball sub, cranberry sauce, mozarella sticks, and popcorn. The list wouldn't be complete if I didn't include KETCHUP. She puts ketchup on a WIDE variety of foods - many that most people would not put ketchup on such as her turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Yuck! 

14. Corresponding with her pen pal from Illinois. If she receives a letter from Stella, she usually writes a reply and has it in the mailbox before the mail is picked up the next day. 

15. Stuffed animals, Legos, and almost anything related to Star Wars. She was thrilled to see the new Star Wars movie on Saturday. I got her a plush penguin and Ian got her two stuffed animals covered with sequins (the kind you can change the color if you reverse the sequins). I gave her a Rey doll (character from Star Wars) which was not something she had on her wish list, but she liked it just as much as the

Hermione doll, which was very high on her wish list. Grandpa and Gubba got her an Ariel Lego set, and Oliver gave her a Lego Friends set. 


We were told not to take any pictures or recordings during the Susquehanna Valley Chorale's Candlelight service. I wish I had a recording of some of that program! I also didn't record anything during their concert to honor Veterans, but we did record part of MCS's Christmas program (see videos below). We accidentally stopped recording Charlie Brown Christmas before the song was over, and the memory card became full before Somewhere in My Memory was done. Oops!

For many years we've had a tradition of opening gifts as a family in the morning on Christmas Eve. This means Nadia opens gifts on her half birthday and her birthday since her half-birthday is on Christmas Eve. We started this tradition because we'd usually head to Paul's parents house in the morning on Christmas Day and then drive to Maryland that same day or the next day. I didn't want the kids to open their gifts at our house in the evening on Christmas Eve or in the morning on Christmas Day and then not have any chance to play with them until we returned from Maryland. Since Paul goes to work on Christmas Eve and we aren't traveling to Maryland this year, in hind sight I wish we had waited until tomorrow morning to do our family gift exchange before going to Paul's parents' house. We had to open the gifts before the sun rose so we could do it before Paul went to work (which meant I didn't take any pictures while they opened their gifts), and then he left so I was the one doing all the unpacking of toys, putting in batteries, helping with Legos, etc. Some years I have taken the kids to the candlelight service alone, but Paul will be joining us for that this evening. It's been hard for me to adjust to the change of Paul having one month off for Christmas (which was true when he was in graduate school and when he was a professor) to having one day off for Christmas. At least he does take one day off. I know some people will have to go to work tomorrow.