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Dear Taryn,

On your star student week, we wanted to write and tell you why we think you are a star.  We believe that the word star is very fitting for you.  You have been a star in everyone’s eyes since we were first aware that you were going to be born. You were the first grandchild on both sides of your family, thus giving you star quality from the beginning.  You have many star qualities that we love about you and hope that you never change about yourself. You have most definitely met or exceeded all expectations.

You are extremely creative, and have a very vivid imagination.  You have had this quality since you were first starting to interact with us. You were creative in the way you crawled around as a baby. You never had a traditional crawl, but what you did worked well for you and you always got to where you wanted to go. You didn’t stay crawling for long. You were figuring out ways to stand and walk well before your peers at daycare. You started using sign language to communicate with us before you were able to form words that we could understand.  That has developed into an extensive vocabulary that you use to truly make us understand the situation you are describing.  Once you were up and moving you had many imaginary friends that we always included in our family activities. You have developed your own plays, acted our scenes and developed your own songs since the age of 2. They have just become more robust and interesting over the years.  You are excellent in art, no matter how abstract the picture.  We love your creativity and it is a quality we want you never to let go of. It will help you in your future, no matter the career field that you choose.

You are a very sensitive, caring, polite and kind person.   You display empathy in most every situation.  You rarely meet a stranger and if you do they will not be a stranger for long. You make friends easily befriending people of all ages, in all walks of life. You generally always think of others and how they will feel in a situation and then base your decisions off of that. You are very giving, collecting your allowance or money you have earned in different situations to donate to different causes to help those less fortunate than yourself. You have taught us to be more giving and to have more empathy to others situation by the example you have set for us.  This is another quality that we want you to never lose sight of.

You are a leader and have been since you first started interacting with other people. You are not scared to try new things and use your creativity to develop new ways to do things.  You are not scared to get up in front of people and talk, teach, act or sing. You it took in on yourself to be a mentor to those younger than you. You went to bible school in Junction with your younger cousin and by the end of your first visit there, you were teaching the class and asked to come back and teach on other days. You dream up new games to play, new languages to speak and before we know it the people that you are interacting with are going right along with you, generally laughing and having a great time. This too is a quality that you should hold near and dear as it will help you along the way.

You are a protector. From when you first started to talk you would let us know that certain activities were very dangerous. You would tell us to be careful with our steak knife as it is very dangerous. You would worry for the football players on the TV telling us that their jobs were very dangerous. You have continued watching out for our family and friends, ensuring we are always wearing our seatbelts or that we are not doing activities that would put us in harms way. This is something we appreciate very much and hope you never change.

All of the qualities described above make up the star that we think you are.  In addition to the qualities described above we think you are beautiful, smart, funny, and are in general a delight and joy to be around. We look forward to seeing your bight smiling face every morning when we get up and love to spend every moment with you that is possible when we are awake. When we put you to be at night, we look forward to the next day that we get to spend with you. You are a blessing to us that we can never say enough thanks for. We would not change anything about you. You will always be a Star in our eye.

We love you to the moon and back and are so very proud of you!

We are so thankful that you are our daughter!

Love,

Mom and Dad