Another Teenager!

For all intents and purposes, this beautiful girl has been a teenager for at least 18 months, but according to the calendar, today is the big day. Happy 13th birthday to you, Makenna Grace. You are still the gray that buffers the stark black and white differences of your older two sisters. Their polar opposites brought closer together with the addition of you into our busy family thirteen years ago. Your quick wit, sparkly personality and ability to negotiate calms a lot of storms when you choose to be that force. The days you don't? Look out because you have real zeal in the final word department too.

The summer of 2000 was the busiest season of our life thus far. Your dad fell 25 feet and spent three weeks in the hospital enduring multiple surgeries. We chose to move your birth to the same hospital as your dad so your sisters wouldn't have to visit their parents in two different locations. You held on for several days after the doctor insisted you were ready to be born (dilated to 7 cm for four days) because Mom needed to support Dad through an eleven hour surgery; or so she believed at the time. From the beginning, you have laid back and waited for the convenient time to make an entrance, selfless most often. Our largest baby at birth, 8 pounds 11 ounces and the earliest at 37 weeks gestation, you wouldn't know it now, being the shortest of your peers. We tease you are "fun size" and fun, you are.

To this day, I promise friends the third is the easiest baby because you were. You were the most patient, least fussy and most pleasant of all my babies. You went with the flow and at the time of your birth, the flow was much more like rapids but you weathered it all beautifully. To this day, you take and take all you can take until you boil over. It's colorful and almost amusing because seeing you take a stand is powerful but rare. We're glad you focus that energy on the issues that matter. You are a good friend, an awesome sister, nurturing, silly and an overall amazing person. I am glad God chose you to be in our family.