That was 2018

Now that I have found my misplaced list of the girls' favorite things, I can write their end of year update. It's only about a month late, but honestly, I'm so far behind in blogging, I'm proud of me for remembering to do it at all.

Karalee

Kara had a pretty good year. She graduated from 6th grade, and began attending 7th grade at Selvidge. She is taking Spanish, FACS, and App & Game Development. She is really liking school this year. This past summer she got to spend a week in Idaho with Papa and Grams. She loved riding horses, fishing, and cooking with Grams. She decided not to play spring or summer basketball this year, but jumped right back into for the fall season. She decided only to play on the school district team this year so that she would have plenty of time to devote to Tae Kwon Do. She earned her black belt in December, and worked so hard to be ready for it. She was nervous, but excelled in the 6 hour testing. She is proud of herself, and we are so proud of her as well. She has continued to love watching anime, and is also now very into reading manga. It is tricky to keep track of what she's reading to make sure I feel it is age appropriate. She is also into music and loves listening to "retro" 80s and 90s music. She loves Britney Spears and refuses to believe Ben when he says that music is lame. Haha. I had so much fun taking her to her first concert this summer. Kara has continued improving her art skills, and spends hours practicing, and filling up sketch pad after sketch pad. She wants to get to a point where she feels comfortable selling her drawings. I think she's getting pretty close. Kara participated on swim team again this summer, ad really excelled at the butterfly stroke. I don't think she got defeated on it all season. She would like to swim year round, if that were the only stroke she had to do. She says it's the easiest for her. I guess it's because of her huge biceps. Seriously, the next time you see her, check out those biceps!
Kara said she still doesn't mind me sharing her current height and weight, and I like to keep track year to year for comparison. This year, she has grown to 65" and weighs 120 lbs. When she is older she wants to be a mangaka, which I'm told is a manga illustrator. Unfortunately, she also wants to live in Japan to do it. Her goal for 2019 is to memorize The Bee Movie. The person she admires is Ms.  Bagheri (her history teacher in 6th grade), because she made her excited about history and she will never forget how happy and fun her class was. 

Here are Kara's current favorite things:

Color: sea green
Animal: Maine Coon Cat
Food: cheesecake
Song: Bohemian Rhapsody- Queen (She was singing it constantly for months!)
Game: Risk
Movie: Goonies
TV Show: Inuyasha
Best Friend: Lorden and Riley (She couldn't pick between them.)
Playtime Activity: video games
Toy/Item: 3 DS
Non-play Activity: drawing
Person She Would Most Like To See: Grams
Outdoor Activity: swimming
Outfit: green Zelda hat, pasta shirt, Zelda jacket, and boot-cut jeans
Activity With Mom: playing Risk
Activity With Dad: playing video games
Food She Dislikes: stir-fry (Ouch! I make it every Monday...)
One Thing She Doesn't Like: people not getting their act together to care about the Earth

Kiersten 

Kiersten had a fun year as well. She graduated from 4th grade, and is halfway through 5th. She loves ruling the school and the bus. She has really been enjoying all the little extra surprises that the 5th graders get all year long. She is doing great at the CCL, and most loved her Shakespeare class. She got to act out a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and she played the part of Puck. She just started a bio-technology class, and is excited about that. She played basketball in the spring, and improved so much. In the last game, she made her foul shot, so that was particularly exciting. She also decided to play the fall/winter season, and is on 2 teams, one with the school district, and one through the CNR league. She gets a lot from both teams she's on, but likes her Rockwood team best because Daddy is her coach, and a lot of her school friends are on the team as well. They were dominating their division, and just got asked to move up to the higher division. It will be more of a challenge, but I think there up for it, and will still be winning some games. She played soccer in the fall, and had a fun season. She was nominated by the coach of an opposing team in the playoffs for a good sportsmanship award. Her team was really beating the other team, and Kiersten was comforting a girl on their team, and telling her she was a great player, and trying to cheer her up. So we were proud of her for that. She has stuck with Fencing, and got to attend the Fencing Nationals in St. Louis. It was lots of fun, and interesting to see Olympic fencers in action. She was impressed, inspired, and intimidated, Kiersten also swam on the neighborhood swim team this summer. They took first place in our division, and she was happy to swim the whole season after having a broken arm last year. She loved the conference meet, and is excited to be in the older group next summer. If I'm not mistaken, she and Kara will be able to practice at the same time, which will be nice. It also pushes them both to try to out perform each other. She likes trying to swim "no breathers", and gets a little farther each time before she needs to come up for breath. It definitely makes me a little nervous though. She participated in Girls On The Run again this year, but was disappointed in her 5K time. She ran with a friend, and that probably slowed her down a good amount, so I told her she should be happy to help her friend finish the race. In May, she made the track team at school, and was on the relay team. She enjoyed that, especially missing almost an entire day of school.  Kiersten loves playing with Jingles, and does not like having to scoop the litter box. She tries to be a good friend and a nice person. She really tries to find ways to help others. 
Kiersten is happy to stand 59" tall, and weighs in at 78 lbs. She hopes to grow up and be a football player who does fashion design on the side, while flipping houses for extra cash. It sounds like she'll be busy. Her 2019 goal is to make more friends. The person she most admires is Daddy because he is smart, strong, and best friends with everyone he meets. 

Kiersten's favorite things are as follows:

Color: purple
Animal: panda
Food: California roll
Song: I'm a mess- Bebe Rexa
Game: Uno
Movie: The Little Mermaid
TV Show: Voltron
Best Friend: Karina
Play-Time Activity: 4 square
Toy/Item: purple bear
Non-Play Activity: sleeping
Person She'd Most Like To See: Grams
Outdoor Activity: soccer
Outfit: leggings and fuzzy purple jacket
Activity With Mom: watching movies
Activity With Dad: watching football
One Food She Dislikes: corn
One Thing She Doesn't Like: moles (the animal, not the freckle)

Evangeline

Evie's 2018 was as eventful as everyone else's. She finished being in 2nd grade, and started being in third grade. She likes being one of the older grades now. She's still the youngest in her grade, though. She played softball this spring, and seemed to like it pretty well, but has decided she's done with it. I guess it's good to start narrowing down her interests now that she's tried a few things. She also decided she is going to be done with soccer, which is less surprising. I could tell by the end of the fall season that she was over it. She stuck it out, though, and played hard for her team. She is still in dance, and absolutely loves it. She would actually like to take more dance classes if we decide to let her. She participated in a cheerleading camp over the summer, and had so much fun doing that. It's not really our ideal sport for her, but we will end up letting her pick what she likes. She was also on swim team and liked being the oldest in her age group. She won some, she lost some, she finally swam breaststroke without getting disqualified at the very last meet, so that was exciting for everybody. I volunteered on the swim team this summer as one of the bullpen leads, so that was fun to be able to hang out with her there. It was also good to be there to stop her when she was getting out of control. She is still participating in Girl Scouts, and loves her troop. They have a lot of fun. They've been earning patches left and right this year. Evie is doing great at CCL, and has taken some fun classes like Ninja Warrior, Architecture, and Video Game Design. She recently started a class about Antarctica. The teacher opens the windows and they all wrap up in blankets and coats. Evie is still full of energy nearly all the time. If she's not busy doing something, she is busy talking my ear off. Often, she is chattering non-stop, while also busy doing something. She is curious about everything, and loves making jokes. I've started needing to tell her when a comment she thinks is funny might sound a little mean. She tends to assume people will appreciate the humor, and not get offended. So I guess she'll keep learning tact as she gets older. The good part is, she can really take it when someone is mean to her, it either rolls off her back, or she is quick to tell someone, "that was rude", instead of just quietly being sad about it, and crying later, like I would have at her age. 

Evie is now 53.5", and weighs 69.8 lbs. She really thought this was her year to outgrow Kiersten, but she's not there yet. Maybe someday. Evie would like to grow up and become a boat captain. Make of that what you will. Her more short-term goal for this coming year is to earn the AR medallion at school. The person she most admires is Daddy because is nice and she loves him. 

Here are Evie's favorite things in life:

Color: pink

Animal: cat

Food: ribs

Song: Love Medley- Moulin Rouge- Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman

Game: Clue

Movie: Moulin Rouge

TV Show: Gumball

Best Friend: Lydia

Play-Time Activity: Galaxy tablet

Toy/Item: shopkins airplane

Non-Play Activity: reading

Person She'd Most Like To See: Grams

Outdoor Activity: swings

Outfit: yellow rose dress

Activity With Mom: cuddling

Activity With Dad: cuddling

Food She doesn't Like: beans 

One Thing She Doesn't Like: crazy people

B and B

The highlight of our year was definitely spending out 15 year anniversary in Barbados together. It was so nice to be there. I'd go again in a second. We also had fun travelling to Idaho and Utah this summer to visit family, and to meet my brother Dave and his family for the first time. That was pretty cool. We took the girls to experience Branson, MO right before school started, and that was such a fun time. I think we'll go again sometime. I'm not sure if Ben liked it was well as I did, though. We had tons of fun visiting Ben's sister Katie and her family in Florida for Thanksgiving. That was a pretty good highlight as well, but Barbados still wins out since we were there with no kids! And we swam with turtles! 
Honestly, we're pretty ready to get on with 2019 and see how much fun we can make the year ahead.