My big girl is 9 years old

This past weekend has been all about celebrating my delightful daughter.

This really captures her personality! - at her First Holy Communion

She's beautiful, she's goofy, and as a friend said to me recently: she skips and sings her way through life!

She's just beautiful, inside and out

I'm not sure I can put together a coherent post that eloquently gets across what this girl is like. Her personality is very, very unlike mine - and the more I see that, the more I appreciate her and marvel at how I've been given a person like that to parent. She's joyful, open, funny and loving... everyone's a friend in her world. That beautiful innocence, of seeing the world as a good place - it's beautiful, and I pray it will merely be tempered with wisdom as she grows older, but never taken away.

N is also an enthusiastic footballer (making up with enthusiasm what is lacking in skill...) and for her birthday, she chose to have a football party and a great time was had by all! At one point I asked her friends to name their favourite things about N. The answers...

her kindness (several times)
that she's such a good friend
she always looks out for us
she's friendly

Handing out party bags at the end of the party

N's fun, people-loving personality challenges me on a regular basis - challenges me to take myself a little bit less seriously, to be a little bit more open to people... these don't come naturally to me, and so I get to grow (sometimes with growing pains...!) through parenting her. What a gift she is.

Here are a few pictures from this past year that really bring across her personality.

Sitting with somebody at lunch so the lady wouldn't be on her own

Friendship knows no age barrier

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