The Birthday and the Girl

Isn't she a beauty? Sigh. This child has been sparkling since the day she was born and still she exudes energy and vitality like no one else I know.  Most days I would consider her the friendliest person around - she loves meeting new people, will happily engage strangers in conversation, invite them to play, kids and grown-ups alike.  She is intense in what has become a love-of-life kind of way, but which began as being extremely sensitive and large in her emotions.  She still feels things to the core, but this is the first year that she hasn't cried about turning a new age - she has embraced "seven" with joy and excitement.  She claims that animals talk to her;  she slows for every dog we encounter on our walks, "does your dog like children?" In fact, there are a number of people in our town whom she only knows by their dogs, and people who know her because she'll sit outside and greet them on their way past our house with their dogs.  I've been out at the store and had people ask, "don't you live on Central?" and they have recognized Eliza.  It's not uncommon for her to exclaim "hey, I know you!" to a complete stranger (to me anyway - and yes, this at times freaks me out, but she generally has a pretty good sense about people and trusts her instincts.  We are working on helping her not hug everyone she meets, including the guy who delivered our pizzas the other day - I'm not kidding...).

So, Eliza wanted to go fishing for her birthday.  We'd never been fishing as a family before, so this meant finding poles and exploring the tackle box, which Dan dug into with abandon! It was a nice way to celebrate not only her birthday, but the first day Dan was FREE!!!! He turned in his last paper on Friday.  After birthday pancakes and present opening, after market and lunch, we headed to the beach to swim, have fresh spring rolls, and fish.

Ani and I occupied ourselves with bubbles and a nearby creek...
It was a lovely ending to the day, lovely to celebrate Eliza and the Solstice by hanging out together in the sunset...