Happy 17th birthday Artist!

Today my youngest child turns 17. Admittedly that’s not as impressive for people with a greater gap between their kids ages than 20 months. But, it’s still a big deal for me. And as has been my wont for the past decade, it’s time to write another letter to my child on their birthday.

I’m so proud of you

You have grown into an amazing young woman. You put a priority on your friendships and the unofficial sister relationships you have with many other younger girls. While we tease you about your minions, I’m proud to have raised someone who wants to befriend younger kids.

So many kids your age would look at them as an annoyance, but you want to encourage them to grow in Christ and to mature as you have done.

You are branching out and talking to all sorts of new people. You’ve joined the student development team at church and are getting up for that every Wednesday morning.

You are the most consistent volunteer at the Therapy farm you volunteer at. Unfortunately for you that means they know they can ask you to do all the really gross jobs like cleaning rabbit cages that have maggots in them.

Speaking of volunteering, you are working on your Stars and Stripes project, for everyone who is not in AHG, you are in charge of a project that will take at least 100 volunteer hours, and you have to have 10 hours supervising other volunteers. I look forward to seeing just what you do.

You’re at that phase of life where you want to be more independent than it is time to be, which means sometimes we but heads with each other as we try to figure out what we want to do. It’s hard for both of us at times because neither of us wants to hurt the other, but we have different goals at times.

I’m excited for your future

You’re in the process of applying for all the colleges, well not really all the colleges, just a few. We’ve got one or two more colleges to visit in the next few weeks. It’s very exciting.

You’re even toying with the idea of going into the military. Which is a somewhat scary idea to me to have two kids in the military, but at the same time I’m so very proud of you and all you are doing.

And just as with your brothers, there is only so much I have to say for these things, so I’m not quite sure what else to say.

Happy birthday Artist!