I was born February third, fourteen years ago. I was born a little premature, but for the most part healthy. I was the only child for almost three years. I was very energetic, a little ornery, and outgoing. I started dancing when I was one and a half and would continue until I was thirteen.

Before I turned one, we moved from Columbia to East Lansing, MI. where my dad had just gotten a job offer. It was a lot colder there, only being around 70 degrees in the summer and farther from our family in Nebraska.

I was not necessarily a “troublemaker” growing up; I had taken out all of the alphabetized CD’s from the drawers and thrown them on the floor, I had taken my mom’s lipstick and put it all over my face, and I had thrown a fit in Target when I couldn’t get the Barbie purse I had wanted so bad. But those were mainly the only moments I had.

I went on a walk every morning with my mom down to the “big rock”, which explains itself. I would push my own stroller that I was supposed to sit in and then we would walk back. I was always outside, even if it was freezing out. I remember the first time I played whiffle ball with my dad; he pitched the ball to me, thinking I would probably miss. I hit the ball hard and it hit my dad in the head, leaving a red mark on his forehead. After that, he pitched from afar.

When I was two, I could read; not just picture books, but I could actually read sections of chapter books too. I probably didn’t understand the content from the chapter books, but I could read the words.
Every Tuesday and Thursday night, my mom taught dance. She would pull me along in the wagon and we would walk up to the dance studio. I would play with my toys or read in the dance studio while the older girls danced.
When I turned three, my mom announced that she was having a baby boy. At the time, I was excited (I think.) I was a little disappointed as I had wanted a sister. The baby would sleep in my room and I would have to share, something I was good at most of the time.
On May 5th, my brother Cooper was born. He was also very small and I attempted to read ‘The Hungry Boy’ to him without him interrupting me with his cries. After a month or so, he got to sleep in my room and was awaken every morning at 7:00AM by me climbing onto the rail of his crib talking to him.
Cooper was only eight months old, but was taken to the hospital because he was getting tubes in his ears for his ear infection problems. I wanted to stay with him in the operation room, but I wasn’t allowed to.



I remember watching Elmo with Cooper in a hospital room and then he got an anesthesia shot and they began to cut his ear slightly open in front of me. Then they put him onto a stretcher and rolled him into the operating room. I colored eleven Barbie coloring pages for him.
I was almost four and we were moving back to Columbia, where I would start preschool. We left right after my dance recital and my mom’s dance recital, in our new car. It was one of our longest trips, taking fourteen hours to get to Columbia.
We moved onto 1014 Darien Dr. in our new neighborhood Quail Creek. Our house was brand new, my parents had just built it and so there was still work to be done.
After preschool had finished, that summer I was being prepared for Kindergarten at Paxton Keeley. My mom, previously being a kindergarten teacher at Pilot Grove, was and had been drilling me like there was no tomorrow.
Then school started and three months into school, another brother was born; Thomas Jay Thelen. Thomas was the opposite of Cooper and me, weighing 10.5 pounds. Thomas was in the hospital for two weeks longer because he had ASD, SPD, and other birth defects. Thomas had been born with a hole in his heart (Atrial Septal Defect) and had to have surgery.
That year, I began gymnastics and soccer, and I still did dance. I had a very busy schedule and still made time to play with friends and my favorite toys, Strawberry Shortcake, Littlest Pet Shop, and Barbie’s.
In first grade, a girl dumped a bag of our teacher’s mints in my backpack; she told the teacher that I stole her mints. The teacher checked my backpack and there they were. She ended up getting in trouble and later told me I was on her “mean list”.
I was eight and I got contacts for the first time. It was fine for the first month and then one day, I got the contact above my eye, onto the white part. I blinked and it went behind my eye. They were hard lenses and I could feel it behind my eye. Eventually, we got it to come out. I quit contacts after that.
Later that year, I had surgery. It was supposed to help my kidney. It did, for a week and then I had to go back for another procedure.
I was supposed to keep an eye on my little brother while I went to my neighbor’s house. I promised I would. The four of us were sledding down her huge hill. Cooper wanted to go first, I told him no. He pushed me into the snow and began to sled down the hill. He lost control and smashed into a tree cracking the sled and receiving a minor concussion.
On the 4th of July, six years ago, I had a sleepover with my best friend/neighbor; we slept on her deck in a tent. We played Clue, watched Netflix, drank lemonade and stayed up all night. It was 7:00AM when we went to sleep.
In fourth grade, my neighbor (who was three years older than me) and I were having a singing/dancing contest. I thought I had won. She thought she had won. We argued and I said I was going home. I got on my bike and she threw a big rock at me and I fell off the bike and onto my knee. She tried to walk me home, because she realized she was going to get in trouble. I ran home on my injured knee and went to the doctor that night. I had broken two major bones in my knee and I had torn a lot of ligaments.
When I was in fifth grade, after we came back from Hawaii, literally after we came back, my parents got divorced. I graduated from my elementary school later that year and my best friend moved to Florida. I had also started softball in fourth grade and I had quit soccer and gymnastics.
Then I started sixth grade, I was on Team 61. Most of my friends were on my team. I remember thinking how boring it was, I know school isn’t supposed to be entertaining, but it was so dull, we always had the same schedule, rotating from one class after another. My middle school was so blank and white, there was never anything on the walls and we were not allowed to talk to people on other teams. You only interacted with your own team. We never went outside for 100% percent club, the other teams got to. We stayed inside, worked on worksheets, and watched jealously at the other teams playing basketball, tag, and capture the flag outside.
In seventh grade, I was working outside of my school on a project with my best friend since Preschool. The sky had gone from blue and bright, to dark and stormy. We had been so focused on our project though that we hadn’t noticed anything until a teacher ran outside swearing and yelling for us to get inside because there was a tornado across the street at the Korean Church. She told us to leave our project, we did and ran inside. We went into our teachers room and told him there was a tornado across the street. He didn’t believe us because we were always “silly” and “jacking off” and so finally after five minutes, he looked under the shade. He kind of panicked, which he never did, always being so monotone and dull. We all hid under his desk area. Then my english class came down, she didn’t read us a story like she did during tornado drills. She just sat there staring. This was only two days after Joplin’s tornado that we had just learned about in class. In the end, it was just a funnel cloud that had just very slightly touched the ground and then left. Our project was destroyed.
In seventh grade, May 5th, 2011 on my brother’s birthday. Cooper’s best friend Blake had leukemia and had been cancer free for four years. Blake went home with strep throat the day before Cooper’s birthday and passed away the next day, the same hour that Cooper was born at. His chance at survival was slim, and had he survived, he would have had major brain damage and would be paralyzed from the waist down. Blake was my friend too; I never knew I could miss someone so much.
I was starting school at West in eighth grade. I was excited to leave that school. When I first got to my junior high school, I was glad that we no longer had to “walk on the colored tile” and we could chew gum. I had also quit dance for good and began to focus more on softball, track and cross country, which I continue to do today.
I had one teacher for Social Studies; he was my favorite teacher that year. Along with other teachers I had, I also had one teacher; not only for math, but study hall and track too. Those were all right after each other, so I had four hours in a row with him.
During spring break of eighth grade, we found Marvin. He was an abandoned cat that was living on our front porch. We hadn’t fed him or really interacted with him, because my brothers and I didn’t like cats that much. After a week, my brothers began to sneak Marvin pieces of meat, then after two weeks, we took him to a humane society to see if he had been missing. He hadn’t and didn’t have a chip in him. We took him to the vet, he was healthy and almost two years old. After that we officially adopted Marvin.
I am now in ninth grade, I am going to a high school next year and I ran Cross Country in the fall for them and I’m going to run Track for them in the spring. I have learned how to manage through all my schools throughout the years and how to play almost every American sport. In the future, I hope to be an athletic trainer or run in the 2016 Olympics in Rio.