My sweet Ava Grace is five today.  Five.  Wasn’t it just yesterday that she quietly entered our world and turned our hearts upside down with her beauty and charm and sensitive heart?

To be honest, I feel like I’ve missed so much of her growing up these past few years.  She is so often quiet and unassuming.  Rarely one to force her way into a situation, she has kind of gone with the flow of our days a bit too easily, sometimes.  But she is still, always, so quick to give an exuberant hug, or climb into a lap, or whisper I love you when her heart overflows at the simplest gestures.  Agh…this little girl still melts my heart.

And I am so thankful that, this week, she started doing schoolwork, which means that every day, I am forced to carve out a big chunk of time just for her.  To read to her.  To hear her thoughts.  To answer her questions.  To give her high fives for doing a good job.  To pour out whatever I can to remind her what a treasure she is to me.

And she is such a treasure, who is both spitfire and slow and steady; sensitive and rough and tumble; independent and damsel in distress.

We think the world of her, and celebrate the joy she has been these five years.  Words can’t say how much we love her.