Rachel Elizabeth Willemina Jimmy John Franklin Delano Craven

Rachel is my crazy, wild, curious, daring child.  I've never seen a kid who moves as much as she does.  Shortly after she learned to walk, she learned to run and I don't think she has stopped since.  She climbs and jumps and runs and dances everywhere and even though it is exhausting, she is so much fun to be around.  I have a hard time photographing her because she doesn't stand still long enough to get a good shot.  I've learned to set my camera to a faster shutter speed if I want to get a good shot of her.  For every good picture I have of her, I have about 20 that didn't turn out.

How to make Rachel hold still for a picture: 

 She loves animals (even large dogs that she has to look up to see) and she checks on our "kee-kee" (kitty-kitty) to make sure it has food and water many times a day. She loves to wear shoes (hers or other peoples) and Eden recently introduced her to dress-ups, so now she spends a lot of time each day dressed like a Disney princess or a ballerina or Dorothy, complete with whatever shoes she can get her feet into.

Rachel has changed so much in the past few months.  At first I thought she just seemed older since we have a new baby in the house to compare her to, but she really has grown up a lot lately.  The past few weeks she has really started to talk more (something that didn't interest her much before).  She has been jabbering for a long time but we couldn't understand most of it.  Now we are beginning to understand more of it and she is stringing words together into sentences.  She's very polite and she always says please and thank you when she asks for something.  She's got such a sweet little voice and big blue eyes, it's hard to resist her. We love our Rachel girl!

Oh, and the post title?  Rachel's full name.  You know how you get the full name when you are in trouble?  Rachel didn't have enough middle names.  We had to come up with a few more.  Don't let that innocent face fool you. 
And everyone in our family has a "full name".  But that's a post for another time...