Elora is growing up way too fast! I just can’t believe she is already eleven. She brings art, music, crafts, creativity, imagination, and beauty into our home every day. She is the resident Mama Hen that loves to read stories to siblings, come up with weird and crazy games for everyone to play, loves cooking and learning to make things all by herself, and makes beautiful works of art, poetry compositions, and even the occasional essay about keeping our oceans clean. She loves to memorize information about… everything. And all she really wants is a big set of encyclopedias (do they even sell those anymore?!?) It seems like only yesterday that she looked like this:
Or maybe this:
Or this or this or this:
The first child of two photographers who have a studio in their basement gets their picture taken a lot. Our other kids… not so much. Elora was our baby who was born with her eyes wide open and ready to see the world. She didn’t want to be held close, she learned to hold her own head up after a few days and has been looking around with eyes wide open ever since. She is curious, observant, funny, and full of life. When she was a baby we were told that we “wore her like a rose”. She was our Juniper Sunshine that we took everywhere from the very beginning – hiking, camping, exploring Paris, on road trips, and more. Oh how this beautiful baby girl filled our lives with love and laughter (and sleepness nights and worry and all those fun parenting things).
Mornings were the best – she would wake up happy and we would just look at her, play with her, gaze adoringly at her. She loves her Daddy. And we really loved dressing her in those strawberry pajamas.
I love Halloween and have never missed a year of costumes and Halloween fun! I love making costumes most of all, and photo shoots with pumpkins we grow in the garden are pretty awesome too. This girl was bound to become a Harry Potter nerd with parents like us.
Seriously! Who wouldn’t want to take a million pictures of that face?!?!?
The funny part is, it seems like she was born just a little while ago, and yet it feels like she has always been part of our family. Once she came into our lives, it seemed like she had always been there. I can’t imagine life without this amazing little person.
Chris and I went to Germany and Austria with his parents and came home with lace from Salzburg and a picture of the dirndl I was going to make for Elora. I didn’t know then that we would later move to Europe and make many more dirndls for my sweet girls. That was the trip that made us think about Europe as a possibility, and within a year and a half we would be in Austria with our little girl, ready to introduce her to new adventures.
Have I mentioned that I love sewing Halloween costumes?
Okay! Enough nostalgia, here we are celebrating Elora’s 11th birthday! She wanted a party with some families we know so that there would be friends for her AND her siblings to play with. I love that she planned her party to make sure there would be friends for all of us.
Elora and Chris came up with a great game called Muggle Quidditch which was so fun! It was hard to get the kids to listen to all the instructions (seriously, with beaters, snitches, seekers, bludgers, and quaffles, that is a lot of instructions!), but once the game got going, it was great. We will file this one away to play at all future parties.
There was a pirate treasure hunt, lots of swinging, running around, presents, strawberry shortcake, yummy food, and lots of fun friends for everyone. The sun even came out to celebrate with us for a little while.
We made blueberry chocolate chip pancakes for Elora’s special birthday breakfast and then all enjoyed watching her open her presents. Lots of painting supplies and books for our little reading artist.
James wasn’t feeling well today, so it was a quiet morning while he rested and the kids did school work. Then I had to take him to the doctor instead of going out with Elora and Oliver like I had planned. Elora was pretty disappointed and asked, “Why did James have to get sick on my birthday?” I reassured her that we would still make it a fun day no matter what. After a long doctors visit, I decided that we needed to at least have a short outing on Elora’s birthday. She really wanted to go to the Kunsthistorische Museum, so we packed James in the stroller so he could rest, and off we went.
How fun! There was a nice display wishing Maria Theresia a happy 300th birthday! Elora thought that was super cool to see a sign celebrating the amazing Empress’s birthday on Elora’s birthday.
The kids love to play in the bushes in front of the art museum. They are shaped like gumdrops and yet have a hollow inside with lots of room to climb. This is too much for my monkeys to resist! We took a few minutes to explore the bushes before heading inside to explore the artwork.
Elora wanted to see the paintings. Specifically, this painting. She sat looking at it for a long time, and then decided to draw. She loves birds, especially chickens. Today she spent a long time drawing the rooster in the painting.
Marion decided to join Elora. Elora drew a rooster for Marion to color. It was so sweet watching them draw together.
James climbed out of the stroller so he could draw a picture too. Elora let him borrow a couple crayons (this is a big deal. She doesn’t share her special crayons that she bought herself!) Oliver and James giggled every time James colored quickly because the crayon would make a squeaky noise. Oliver spent most of our time at the museum looking through the schedule for the Volksoper that he found in the coat room. He noticed that “Die Fledermaus” is playing this month and mentioned it once every ten minutes for the entire museum visit. I guess he really wants to see it!
Marion liked the lion in the background of the painting and spent some time figuring out how to draw a lion’s mane.
Oliver and I examined this painting to see if we could recognize any paintings within the painting. We found a couple that we have seen in this very museum.
This museum trip was perfect. The kids never asked for snacks (total miracle) or drinks, James never fussed about feeling sick, Marion was very patient almost the whole time we were there, all the kids sat and drew or looked at paintings for 15-20 minutes in a couple of rooms and we made it all the way to museum closing time with every child still behaving beautifully. This was a birthday miracle for Elora and I am so grateful. She had been so sad that our day didn’t go as planned, and then everything worked out so fun for her.
We even rode in the elevator with the mirror ceiling all by ourselves so we could take crazy pictures. The kids enjoyed looking around the book shop and Elora bought herself a new drawing book about flowers with her birthday money.
We came outside at sunset and the sky was so beautiful. The kids were so excited to see it. It was past dinner time and no one complained at all, they were just enjoying being together.
Oliver helped out by pushing James in the stroller for me.
The girls loved this cone shaped bush and wanted to pose by it. Then we played one rousing round of hide and go seek in the bushes before heading home for Elora’s special birthday dinner and magnum bars!
I am so grateful to have Elora in our lives. She is the bright spot of kindness, activity coordination, stories, silliness, and laughter in our family. She loves being in charge, being creative, talking to grown ups about their favorite books or art, being sneaky (she told me just today that she loves being sneaky), taking care of little kids, reading (anything and everything), drawing, acting when she gets to be the wicked witch or evil stepmother, painting, Bob Ross, Lindsey Stirling, Johann Strauss, and museums. She likes to explore the city, but is more at home in nature and hopes to live in Utah when she grows up. She wants to be an artist, a writer, and a mom when she grows up. Tonight at dinner she said, “When I grow up I want to be like Mom. But also like me, because I am pretty great.” We are so proud of the young lady she is growing up to be. I just can’t believe that we are getting close to having a teenager in the house. Our Juniper Sunshine has grown up, and she is amazing. We are so blessed.
