Eli has been waiting for three years for this birthday! Finally she got to go to the American Girl store to pick out her very own American girl doll.

After much debate the lucky doll turned out to be Maryellen Larkin, a little girl born in 1954. Each doll comes with her own life verse. Maryellen’s is very much like Eli herself:

“I follow my heart instead of the crowd
I have a heart full of high-flying hopes and a head full of
pie-in-the-sky ideas, even though they don’t all get off the
ground. But I know that if I stay true to who I am and what
I believe, the sky’s the limit.”

She will be a welcome companion for Kit Kittredge who has been already been around for three years, when Abi turned seven.