8+1!

I think M had a pretty good 9th birthday, even if she really, really didn't want to turn 9 and end her year of being her favorite number 8. We started off the celebrations with skiing at Mt. Bachelor! After a rocky start, confidence was regained and everyone had a blast despite the clouds rolling in along with a pretty serious wind (that Bopa challenged...and lost) that nearly blew everyone back onto the chair lift when they tried to get off!

Everyone's legs were too tired for M's original plan of ice skating, but a lot of cake made those tired muscles feel better. 

We couldn't find the candles :( so she blew out some matches that the adults held in front of her, and she got all the pieces of the cake that she wanted. 

And I think we started a new tradition! Silly string fight! As you can imagine, M in particular was pretty excited about it. Next time we might need to get some cans for the adults too!

But a little about M at this age:

Favorite movie - Star Wars; the Force Awakens

Favorite book - Percy Jackson

Favorite color - yellow

Favorite food - anything sweet and sugary

Favorite number - 8

Last book read - Percy Jackson #1

Last movie seen - Inside Out

Currently she wants to be a chemist when she grows up and is pretty seriously into all things science. She can't help but dance when fun music is playing and loves to play pranks on people. The trick is learning which ones won't get her in trouble! She loves hiding herself (under the sink is a new favorite spot) and hiding valuables such as phones, and is really into making up her own jokes, comics, and stories. She's recently become a defensive basketball star and is the household Chubby Bunny champ, despite having a tiny mouth. She cares deeply about others' feelings, often putting their wants above her own. For example, when we discussed going to Bend, we realized she would miss a basketball game if we did. We left it up to her, since it was her birthday weekend. She chose to go because she didn't want everyone else to be disappointed because they'd been looking forward to going. Another sweet example was as we talked about her getting back into speech. She didn't really want to keep going. We had a long talk about it, pluses and minuses, etc. At the end, she mentioned a friend of hers who has been taking speech longer than she, and said it's a good thing she's going to keep going bc it would make her friend feel bad if M got to stop and she had to keep going despite having started first. When M gets in trouble, we have to be careful about what we say to her because she has an overactive guilty conscience and for example, when she got in trouble for sneaking into Aunt Patti's car and riding home with her without telling any of us, we found her crying hours later because she felt so bad about it. She had a hard time moving on past the thought of how worried we had been. Poor dear. She has grown up so much in the last few years and we love the sweetheart she's becoming.