Things I Love About Camille

 It's Camille's 8th birthday today! I'm feeling such bitter sweet feelings right now -- I can't believe how big she is, but it's so fun watching her grow up. She's such a wonderful little person, and I love her so much. Here are some of the many things I love about Camille: 

• She loves primary songs. She often reads through the lyrics of the songs in the primary song book to learn the songs in it better. She can be heard singing primary songs around the house. In fact, just now, Daniel and I could hear her in the bathroom and her bedroom singing, "I will go, I will doooooo the things the Lord commands. I know the Lord provides a way, He wants me to obey!" It makes my heart just break with happiness. It brings me so much joy to hear her (and my other kids) sing and love the primary songs so much. She, more than any of my other kids, loves the primary songs. A few weeks ago, she asked me to print off the music to one of the songs they were practicing for the primary program -- I Will Walk with Jesus -- and she taped it up on the wall in her room so she could sing it and practice it. That's her favorite song right now, I think. 💕
• She's so snuggly. She loves to hug and kiss and snuggle with the people she loves. 
• She's not shy. She's pretty confident talking to almost anyone. Sometimes I have to tell her that Brooke or Jack are talking to the doctor or Sister Frei or something. 
• She still loves playing with dolls, even though her sister has kind of grown out of that. Emily came to dinner last week and gave the girls her American girl and all the accessories to go with her. She's been wanting to play with her all week. 
• She's creative. She comes up with the cutest, cleverest little crafts, art and projects. 
• She adores her big sister and is always saying how cool Brooke is and how she wishes she were Brooke (to which I always say that I'm glad she's herself). She loves to play with Brooke. She also OBSEESSES over Sawyer, and is always squeezing him and kissing him. He hardly ever likes it, though, which means he screams at her to stop, and I always have to intervene and tell her that when he makes that sound, it means he doesn't like it. The one she's really hardest on is poor Jack. It's a constant struggle to get her to be kind to him. 
• She's started being so funny about things, like for example, she has started taking a shower almost every morning. I keep telling her she doesn't need to shower every day, but she likes it because "it refreshes me and helps me wake up."
• She loves books. But she nearly always comes out of the library with more books than she can read. And often when we take them home and they sit in our house for a couple of weeks, she's lost interest in them anyway. She just loves the idea of reading so many books, and all the books look amazing to her. She loved reading Harry Potter last month. 
• She's so brave about getting shots every day. And she's growing so well on growth hormone. She doesn't even really register that she has to get a shot every day, she's so amazing. 
• She's enthusiastic about almost everything. She loves going places and doing things, getting together with people and playing new things. I love that she always seems ready for a new adventure. 

For her birthday, we, of course skipped school. I spent some time making a cake that afternoon while she played with her siblings. She wanted a vanilla cake with blueberry frosting on it, so, flying by the seat of my pants (of course), I did what I could. I decided to add mashed blueberries to the vanilla frosting I had already made, which made the frosting way too runny. 😅  Sooo it didn't look pretty. But it did taste pretty good. And Camille was happy, which was all that really mattered. She did want wolves on top of the cake. But I didn't get any wolves in time, and the wolf toy we already have is pretty... dirty and well loved. 

For her birthday activity, she wanted to go to Cornbelly's. So after Brooke went to soccer practice, the other kids and I went, and Daniel met us there. I think Brooke was a little sad to miss Cornbelly's on Camille's birthday. But the other kids had a good time, and they did things that Brooke wouldn't have loved doing anyways.

I left Cornbelly's early to be home for Brooke when she was done with practice and to start dinner. Camille wanted hotdogs (and veggie dogs for us vegetarians), cucumbers and bacon. And I think we had a watermelon that needed to be used up that I added in. It was funny, because while we were eating, Camille said, "I don't really like hotdogs." And I was like, "What?!?" And then I proceeded to explain to all the family that when I say they can choose whatever they want for birthday dinner, they can pick something they really like. If they don't like something, don't request it!! I was baffled. She kind of said she didn't really know she didn't like them. But I think that's just silly. We had plenty of hotdogs over the summer. I don't know why she picked hotdogs. 😂

We unwrapped presents and ate birthday cake that evening after dinner. She got narwhal and Jelly books, a bunch of homemade things from Brooke, a sketch book and gel pens and colored pencils. I think she was happy and had a great birthday. 

Brooke made her this cute little crocheted kitty cat. It was adorable.