Sixteen Candles
Sixteen. This beautiful girl turned sixteen a few weeks ago last month. How is that even possible?
At sixteen Raena loves all things music. She continues to participate in choir at the local high school. This year she was in the advanced women’s choir. She spent months practicing the song An Die Musik for Regional’s. She did well, but didn’t quite make it to State. She still enjoys playing piano as well.
She is still working on getting her license. If she had a theme song for driving it would be Turn the Wheel, Isa from Dora the Explorer. I think she may be the only one of her friends who is learning to drive a manual and it’s slowing her down some. That and gaining the confidence that she can drive, a task that has not been made easy by younger sisters who act like they are fearing for their lives and are quite the backseat driver. We’re hoping by summer she’ll be ready to take her test.
Aside from learning to drive she’s been researching colleges, because that’s happening next year. It makes me a little sad to think this time next year we will be preparing to launch her into the world. Her and RJ flew to Colorado the week after her birthday to tour UC @ Boulder.
She loved the campus, but was a little disappointed that they do not allow religious buildings on campus and the closest place of worship for our church is 30 miles away. It’s still pretty high on her list, but I think that knocked it down some. So far, all of her choices are out of state and in the snow. She reluctantly put a state college down to have her test scores sent to. She will be taking the ACT and SAT in the coming months.
I feel both excited and sad for her to be entering the next phase in life, but I know that Raena is going to love college life.
For her birthday we took her to a hibachi grill for the first time. She got lobster and didn’t care for it prepared on the grill, so her dad traded her for his chicken.
Her and another of her friends have birthday’s close together so they combined parties and took a group to do an Escape Room. Unfortunately, the room broke, so they didn’t get to finish it. They still had fun though.
She was recently called as the Laurel secretary and has also enjoyed participating in our libraries Young Adult Action Society. She also loves attending Stake dances, even the ones that are not for our Stake.
She continues to play peacemaker in our home and is usually willing to help out. She continues to be a delight and we are excited to see what the future holds for her.
