Arwen is my first daughter and she’s great. 
Arwen has a way of rolling through life getting tricky things accomplished while somehow creating no waves. 
Now our four girls occasionally make waves and fight with each other, but Arwen for the most part has a way about her that eases tension while getting stuff done. 
Her mind is a cutting one but it doesn’t make one feel cut if you know what I mean. 
She was a strong little girl and laughed a lot. She one time from her car seat said in mock seriousness “Dad! I panky panky you!!” when I got lost in South Calgary. There is a picture of her standing on my dad’s hands and balancing when most girls wouldn’t have had the ability while still in diapers. 
She’s been balancing well ever since. 
She’s our first Venue intern and earned every inch of it herself. She loves to work and rarely makes mistakes. She has an inherent way of knowing what it is someone wants of her and finds a way to do it. 
I remember when she first went to Croxford a month late when we moved to Airdrie in her Grade 9 year. Now I’m not intimidated by much, but shifting from a small private school to a school of a thousand when you don’t know a living soul would have been a hard one for me or anyone. I walked her into school early on and thought to myself “I’d be intimidated going to school here! High school kids are so cool!!”
Are high school kids cool? No, they’re insecure teenagers who need deodorant, but they do their best to try and I couldn’t imagine that coming in October could have been easy when everyone had friends already. 
But she found a way. She was a great firstborn because by the time Ailish came into the high school the trail was blazed and she had no trouble at all making friends. 
I asked Arwen how her Grade nine class was as my only experience seemed like the kids were, well, insane Grade nine kids, and some of their teachers were cut from the cloth of “Please let’s be friends” while my Grade nine teachers were more along the lines of “Don’t make me kill you” (something to be said for the Old Testament approach though..), Arwen said something like “Oh, there’s loads of drama and gossip but I don’t hang out with those kids. My friends and I don’t care.”
I’d have cared because the gossip kids are so cool!
Arwen doesn’t care. 
It’s a little awkward that she’s slightly shorter than her sister Ailish as everyone assumes the taller one is older, but she takes it with good humour. 
One day I heard the girls dying of laughter and when I went to see what was so funny someone gasped “Arwen just looked at me and said in the creepiest voice ever “I’M HERE FOR YOUR SOUL!!!”
She has a way of surprising us all every day and there’s nothing better for connection that a surprise sometimes. Just when you think you’ve seen everything from a person they let you know there’s far more than you could unearth in a lifetime, and that’s exciting. 
Not that everyone is like that, there are some people you meet that let you know in about three sentences that any relationship with them will be about them.
Arwen’s life is not about Arwen and it’s a beautiful life! She lives to serve others and is an absolutely terrific help to her mother around the house, with her sisters, and now around the church. 
Some kids in her school program were having trouble logging community service hours for the year. She laughed and said she logged her hours in less than a month. 
But she would have a bright future in any career I could think of except government because that might be a waste of her time and talent (haha. Had to get that in there for kicks Blake and Angela:). 
One day she’ll bring my well behaved and well mothered grandkids to my house and have to give me a lecture about not spoiling them, which I will take with my customary aplomb while devising ways to break the rules, but I will respect her wishes because her wishes would also somehow be best for me too. 
It’s just the way she is. 
She will make a priceless wife one day, but beware young boy/men, I will destroy you if you don’t treat her right. I have no problem going back to jail. Or to jail. I can’t remember and that should worry you:)
She is already a lovely young lady who acts more like an adult than most adults, surely there are young men out there who are up for the challenge of marrying someone smarter than they are?
Goodness knows I did. 
Whatever. 
I still won in the end.