Kianna's 12th Birthday

Kianna is a sweet girl with a great heart for Jesus. She loved playing with all the little girls on her mission trip. She loved letting them play with her hair. They didn't want to let her go when the time came.

Kianna has lots of determination, lots of spunk and lots of interests:

• Slime- She is currently obsessed with making slime. She can make butter slime, glitter slime, floam slime, flubber slime, and the list goes on. She enjoys playing with it, watching videos about it, and particularly enjoys making it. She has always enjoyed mixing soaps and shampoos together, to make her own concoctions, so this makes perfect sense. We are encouraging her to use these skills to develop her cooking and baking skills. She made us chocolate chips cupcakes with homemade cookie dough frosting, which were amazing! She also helped me make dinner recently. She loves doing things on her own without my help. 
• Animals and Dinosaurs- Kianna loves animals. She loves to cuddling with Rizzo and teaching him new tricks. She enjoys giving him baths and often get in with him. She enjoys watching animal videos and as a result is quite knowledgeable. She still loves dinosaurs. She currently wants to be a marine biologist or paleontologist when she grows up.
• She loves stuffed animals, especially the big eyed ones. She has quite the collection going on.
• Shopping- Kianna loves to spend money. She doesn't like to work or save money, but loves to shop. Especially when she knows she gets to buy something. It doesn't really matter what she buys, she just loves to buy things, especially little squishy trinkets. 
• Singing- Kianna has a beautiful voice and can often be heard singing around the house. She loves singing on her karaoke machine. She led worship on her mission trip, which is pretty cool. She enjoys choir at school.
• Music- Kianna has decided to give up the clarinet, so she can have time for theater at school. Kianna is very dramatic and enjoys performing, so we think this will be a great fit for her. She did show choir last spring at Vernon and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, her new school doesn't offer it. Kianna also wants to learn how to play the piano. Our rental house has a piano, so we'll see how much time she dedicates to learning to play it.
• Sports- Kianna's favorite sport is soccer, followed by basketball and volleyball. Kianna and Trace had soccer tryouts for a travel team called Jupiter United. She is excited to get plugged in with a new team here in Florida.
• School- Kianna's favorite subjects are Math and Science. She is not a big reader, but occasionally enjoys reading books about animals. She read "My Life in Dog Years" over the summer and really enjoyed it. 
• Friends- Kianna doesn't really have a best friend. At Vernon, her closest friends were Amory and Ella. At church, she enjoys Christian, Isaac and Zoey. In our neighborhood, she enjoys playing with Claire. We are praying Kianna will develop some good friends here in Florida.
• Food- Kianna loves sushi, hamburgers, ramen noodles, macaroni and cheese, Takis (a spicy rolled chip she introduced us to), and cookie dough.
• Allergies- Kianna has been getting allergy shots since last summer to help with her oral allergy syndrome. Thankfully she can now eat all of her favorite fruits and vegetables again. She still occasionally complains of a food upsetting her stomach or making her mouth itch, but the reactions seem to be much milder than before. She is currently in the maintenance phase of her shots, where she gets a shot every 3 weeks.

It was important to Kianna that we celebrate her birthday with family in Iowa before we moved. We ended up celebrating at Osaka Japanese restaurant with The Langfalds, Grandma Becki, Grandma Sue and Grandpa Wayne. We followed that up with Angel Food Cake and gifts back at our house. 

We also celebrated all of the summer birthdays with a farewell party at Aunt Stacie and Uncle Patrick's house. Aunt Stacie ended up cutting Kianna's red tips off her hair, which was a little bittersweet, but necessary to comply with the new dress code at JCS. We had buster bar for dessert. Yummy!

In order to celebrate the actual day with a bang, we invited the Wenzel's over to celebrate Kianna's birthday with us. We hadn't seen them in a little over two years, so it was really fun to spend time with them again! We took them to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to show them the sea turtles. The kids were able to participate in one of the Junior Vet Labs again. This time they learned about sea turtles nesting habits, since it is nesting season. Sally and I enjoyed listening to the lesson too!

We spent the rest of the day at the beach, had a nice meal and frozen yogurt for dessert. I'd say our little lady was well celebrated!