Who are these guys anyway? Part 1: Hal

Halle Judea @ 2505 days 125 minutes, originally uploaded by №7.

See those little lips, how they are just working sooo hard not to bust out in a smile, but be super serious? That's why I love this picture. Halle does all she can to be "grown up" but she is such a ham all at once and you have to be ready to catch the little person inside her in small glimpses and then giggle like crazy.

I seriously don't know where the last seven years have gone. All of a sudden I have a beautiful child, not toddler, not teen, standing before me each day, helping to make our home lovely, to cook, to care for her brother and sister.... her passion to have a purpose as a true helper around here is relentless. She has a hunger to learn and to read that is insatiable. Most nights we find her still awake and reading in her bed hours after we have tucked her in. She is focused in ways that I can not imagine being and has a capicty to do everything with precision and an attention to detail that I know did not come from me!

Halle is a thinker and although she loves to be with friends and family, she is an introvert .Sometimes we are just dying to enter her small world and discover what goes on behind her deep brown eyes. When she was born, our prayer was that she would be blessed to be a blessing and this has certainly happened.

These days her obsession is legos, art, and creating anything with used materials (this came about after the recycling propaganda of "reduce, reuse and recycle" hit our home). She is learning to speak Spanish, reads everthing she can get her hands on, including every cereal box or pasta wrapper and is quite the force to be reckoned with on her bicycle. Also, is it normal for kids to love math? We recently had to buy Halle a "fun" math workbook because she wanted to sit and practice math facts! Seriously, this must be a trait from Josh, because math makes me want to puke even as I teach it in our homeschool.

When she was a baby, I think I imagined seven being forever away and that my heart would somehow break with a child so old. But as her birthday approaches next month, I am so thrilled. Seven is so fun! This girl is such a joy and I have never enjoyed being her mother more than right now.