Eliana is growing up

Our Eliana is six, almost seven years old.  She is growing up quickly and here is a re-cap on the past several months.

The picture above shows a new gap in her smile.  She recently lost another tooth on the bottom, after she bit into an apple with her loose tooth.

Earlier this year, Eliana again participated in the Awana games.  It's a competition where Awana teams from around the region come together to compete in relay type games.  They do various events, such as run together while the whole team is holding onto a pool noodle...

Karina and Gabriel went along to watch.  We sat on the sidelines to cheer on Eliana.

Gabriel enjoyed snacking and then snacking some more.

After about an hour of competition, they added up the score and it turns out that Eliana's team won first place!  We couldn't believe it especially since last year, they placed last!  They all received medals...

And then posed for pictures.

Here is Eliana with her first place medal.

Eliana also took a theater/acting class in the evenings for a while.  Unlike the other members of her family, Eliana absolutely loves being on stage performing in front of people and does not suffer from stage fright in the slightest.  At the end of the class, the kids put on a performance.  In this skit, she was a bunny rabbit.

Here she is saying her lines...

And more of her skit with her classmates...

And here she is with her certificate of completion!

In her school, she also takes a drama class and that class also had a performance at the end of the school year.  In this performance, she is a sloth in a jungle.

Here is a little snippet of her singing a song along with some classmates.

So as you can see, Eliana is the artistic one in our family.  Not only does she enjoy acting, but also drawing.  She spends quite a bit of her time drawing pictures and has gotten quite good at it.

Here is a picture she drew recently.  It's about a book-on-tape that she has been listening to recently about a girl that wants to fly across the ocean like Amelia Earhart.  So here is the airplane being piloted by the girl...

Here is Eliana's sidewalk (or rather--driveway) art using chalk.  She drew a beach landscape, with a dolphin in blue, a couple of palm trees, a crab, and a flamingo.  Pretty good, we thought!

Eliana also applies her art skills to non-traditional modalities...such as drawing a smiley face on her spoon using A1 steak sauce.

She is quite proud of herself.

So listening to books-on-tape is what Eliana loves doing, even more than watching videos.  She can listen for hours and hours, even the same books over and over.  One of the easiest ways to motivate her to do her chores is to tell her that she can listen while she works.

Here she is lounging in our backyard while eating her post-dinner dessert.  She also loves being outside more than any of our other kids.  So listening, while being outside and eating ice cream--Eliana is in heaven!

And here is Eliana just about to jet out the door on her last day of school for this year.  We can't believe that our baby girl is almost seven years old!