Meet Kristen . . . It's Her Birthday!!

This is Kristen, my third child and today is her birthday!! It is hard to believe it was 22 years ago today I was in the hospital giving birth to her. My how times flies!! (oh, and she really doesn't have one arm in a sleeve and the other bare. The arm on the right is mine)

Kristen has always been a joy, although she did make me realize I was not as good of a mother as I thought. Her older brother was sleeping through the night at two and a half weeks of age, which I was sure was due to my superb mothering skills. Then Kristen came along and blew that theory. She didn't sleep through the night until she was two and a half YEARS!!

However, that one fault aside, she is a great girl--Beautiful, strong, smart, witty, creative and independent. She is also a very gifted teacher and has an amazing ability to entertain children of all ages. She likes to draw and write, play the flute, read, hike and is a great cook.

As a little girl she was always up for adventure and felt she could take on anything or anyone. At the grocery store when she was three she wanted to carry the gallon milk containers, because she was, as she told me "A super strong woman". And at four, when the boys were in the back yard playing baseball she got her own bat and while running out the door I heard her yell, "Watch out boys!! I'm gonna hit a home run!!"

She graduated second out of 640 students in her high school class. At BYU she works in the business department and is studying to be an elementary school teacher--something she has wanted to be since third grade. On a date once a young man asked her if being "just an elementary ed. major" she had a hard time communicating with the people in the business department. (Yes, he really asked her that!!) I told her she should have said, "No, as a teacher I am practiced at speaking slowly and explaining things so everyone can understand."

Her other goal is to be a mother. On career day in high school she put on an apron and went to school carrying a doll on her hip. All through her classes she bounced the baby on her knee or would rock it back and forth. Many of her teachers were shocked she would want to be a mother when she was so smart and could do anything. Some even suggested motherhood would be a "waste" of her abilities. But I was so proud of her for standing up to them and holding strong to her values.

She is also our family's best missionary as she is willing to share the gospel with anyone who will listen--just ask her friends, her co-workers from high school or the people she sits by on the airplanes.

We are so blessed to have her in our family and wish her a . . .

VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!