Happy 15th birthday, Tori :)!!!!

Tori is a talented, beautiful blessing in our family :)! She is witty, goofy, and knows when a punchline will best fit, but she also knows just when someone might need a little extra love, and makes sure they get it in some way or another :). She loves to sit down and get "deep conversations" out of the little boys. We benefit from this by hearing them later :). As she surmised recently, "Peter is just easy to get cute stories from. But Mama's best at getting stories from Emmi, Bri gets good stories from Abbi, and I get good stories from Josiah!" She loves poetic and mythical things: red umbrellas, dragons, the color green, medieval dresses, the sea, and books such as "The Lord of the Rings" (Tolkien is still one of her favorites!). She also loves to play Monopoly :).

Tori is passionate- everything she does, she goes all out, right away. I've seen her countless times draw an awesome picture, and love it so much, then draw another one and realize it's better, and instantly want to throw the first away. Mama and I are constantly saving some of her drawings from an untimely demise, just to hear her later say that she "loves this drawing so much, even though she hated it for a while!", haha :). Once she hears of something she wants to try, she goes and tries it -and usually does it well. One time, she sat down and said, "Alright, time to do this for real"... and then she did it. Perfectly, And I was like, "HAD YOU EVER DONE THAT BEFORE?!", and she was like, no?.... and all I could say was, that is so you... haha :).

Her art is so impressive (she shares some of it here on her blog and here on her pinterest)! She started getting serious about it a couple years ago, and she's continued getting better by practice, tips from Daddy on things to tweak to bring out the best of her work, and online tutorials. She's never had a real lesson! I think one of her favorite phrases might be "you can't rush art", and yet I've seen her do drawings in fifteen minutes that far out placed mine that may take four hours, haha! She is also a wonderful pianist! While she can play by note, she prefers to play by ear, and it's beautiful! And, once again, she's self taught! It's amazing!

She recently challenged Bethani to read through the bible with her, and I have loved to see them keeping each other accountable to keep up and make it an important part of their day :). They are even doing so good, that they have decided to bump up their daily quota, and finish early :)!

One thing that people may not know for a long time after meeting Tori is that her voice control is amazing! She has a beautiful singing voice, but the most unusual thing about it is, as she loves to say abut her range, "I can sing from Thorin to Snow White!" And she's a great voice impersonator! I remember when she was just eight or nine, she found out she could do Dori ("Finding Nemo") and Ellie ("Up"), and then for the next several years she would just bring out new voice impressions whenever she wanted to make us laugh. She doesn't do it as much anymore, but she still pulls it out just enough to let us know that she's still got it ;).

I love you Tori :)!!!! Happy birthday!!!!