Nathan's 5 Year Interview

Warning: Almost 5 minutes long, and be prepared for some distractions (bad timing on the dryer buzzer - and isn't it always set to "off" anyway??).



And here are my editorial comments for some of his answers:

• Usually when asked his favorite color, he'll say "blue and green and orange and red" and sometimes throw a couple of others in there too.
• Favorite book - he LOVES the Magic Tree House series!  We check them out from the library on cd for Nathan to listen to during quiet time (and anytime he's in the toy room really) and he also loves for me to read the books to him.
• Another favorite shirt that he really likes to wear is the one where the shark is about to eat a hot dog. Every time he puts that shirt on he'll tell me "Granddad looooves this shirt!" because the first time he saw it Granddad laughed about it and said what a nice shirt it was.  
• When we talk about what he wants to be when he grows up, he sometimes says that he wants to work at the hospital with Daddy.  Then the other day he said he wanted to work at the children's hospital with John Little and Sarah chimed in "Yeah, I want to work with John Little too!".  (JL is a physician that goes to church with our families at Hardin Valley who visited us in Boston and we cheered him on during the Boston Marathon). 

Halloween 2014!

Gosh, October is such a crazy busy month around here, with birthday after birthday quickly followed by Halloween!  Of course I didn't help matters by deciding to make both the kids' Halloween costumes again this year. It starts out fun and exciting, and I love being able to give the kids pretty much exactly what they want, but it was certainly time consuming! And then about 10 days before Halloween I realized that they would need the costumes finished early to be able to wear them to the Hardin Valley (our families' church) Fall Festival held on Sunday the 26th.

Thankfully the day before the festival was a Saturday, and Brian went to his parents house to work on a car with his dad and took both kids along with him. Since they ended up eating lunch and taking naps at Nana and Granddad's house, I was left with the whole day to finish up costumes. When they got back home that afternoon, the costumes were ready for a test run.  Sarah was so excited that she made sure that I did her make up as well!

Nathan's costume needed just a little more tweaking (finish the hat and modify the tail so it wasn't so heavy), but it was in excellent shape the next afternoon for the Fall Festival.

The kids LOVED all the different inflatables they had at the church.  They first spent lots of time in the bouncy house, but then when I convinced them to try the giant slide they were hooked for the rest of the night.  Nathan must have gone down this slide 20 - 30 times, and Sarah almost as many!  They both loved getting major air as they jumped their way off the top of the slide and Nathan always wanted "Mr. Daniel" (Brooks, who was one of the men monitoring the chaos) to watch him as he went down the slide!

After taking a few pictures, I realized that videos would do better justice to the kids' experience.  Here is a longer one:



And here is one that gives a better view of Sarah.  Unfortunately the only good angle I got of Sarah was the very first video and its pretty jerky since I hadn't figured out exactly how best to record (I took a couple but could never figure out which side which kid would be sliding down).



After all that fun, it was time for the actual Trick-or-Trunk portion of the night.  Just like last year, the kids combined "Happy Halloween" and "Trick-or-Treat" into their own greeting of "Happy Trick-or-Treat!!". 

Now fast-forward to Friday, which was both a school day and Halloween!  The kids were encouraged to dress up for school that morning and Brian and I both got to be there for the kids' Costume Parade.  Here's Nathan...

...and with his preschool class!

And Sarah?  Well, I had commented to Brian earlier in the morning that I wasn't sure how this was going to go with dropping off Sarah (still with tears every day), then seeing her again, then her having to separate again.  As expected, it didn't go smoothly, as you can see from this video where Sarah's class starts out the parade.



She refused to leave my lap and join her class for the rest of the parade or for her class picture.  So I didn't force the issue, but I was so glad that Daddy was there so he could handle dropping her off twice in one morning!

But here we are Halloween night, looking cheerful again!  The weather was cold and rainy, so we decided to take the kids over to the West End Trick-or-Trunk (which, brilliantly, was held inside the building!).  David and Carroll went with us while Gran stayed at our house to hand out candy (though only one lone trick-or-treater came to the door the entire night.  Our house is at the top of a hill on the edge of our neighborhood, so I wasn't counting on many kids anyway).  We had a nice time at West End, the kids enjoyed it (though by that time they certainly didn't need more candy) and te adults got a chance to visit with some old friends.  A wonderful evening was had by all!

October Birthday Extravaganza: Nathan's Birthday

Nathan handled the anticipation of his birthday well... of having to wait through the whole month of October plus lots of other birthday celebrations before he finally got to have his big day.  And I'm pretty sure that he'd say it was worth the wait.

And because I love this picture so much, I'm going to jump straight to it...

Yes, our FIVE-YEAR OLD birthday boy was pretty excited about his big day, especially the part where he was surrounded by lots of family for the most important part of the day - singing and blowing out the candle.

But to back up, Brian was on vacation the week of Nathan's birthday (a happy coincidence), so in the morning Daddy offered to take the kids to get doughnuts after a light breakfast.  Though going out for doughnuts was one of Nathan's favorite activities in Boston, to our surprise he turned down the offer of a ride in the truck in favor of playing with his blocks and Duplos upstairs while listening to his "Jack and Annie stories" (Magic Treehouse series) books on CD.  I have been checking out different stories for him to listen to for his quiet time, but he loves listening so much that many mornings he and Sarah will disappear up to their playroom to listen and play (usually nicely, though sometimes with intermittent screaming) together for thirty minutes or an hour or more!  Since that's what he wanted to do on his birthday morning, Sarah got the fun of riding alone with Daddy in the truck to get our treats.  I'm not sure whether the highlight was getting to eat a doughnut in the car on the way home or getting to hold Daddy's hand during the ride (she's such a sterotypical girl in some ways!), but she came home super excited about the trip. Nathan was not reluctant, however, to partake of the Krispy Kreme deliciousness once they arrived back home!

Shortly thereafter, Gran and Pawpaw showed up at our house to take Nathan on his birthday outing.  Their first stop was the store to pick out a Tennessee baseball hat (Nathan really, really wanted me to get him one when we went shopping for preschool "orange day", so at the time I thought this might be the perfect birthday present from another big "Big Orange" fan - Pawpaw!), then it was out to lunch at Chick-fil-a.  Nathan came back with a huge grin on his face, though unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of him and the grandparents with his loot.

After quiet time and TV, Nana and Granddad came over so that Nathan could open his presents early and have time to play before dinner.  Knowing Nathan loves Thomas Train stuff, Nana and Granddad got him a Gordon engine ("Express coming through!").

Then he got to open his biggest present - a wooden train track set (which thankfully Gordon is compatible with, even though he is a Mega Blocks train) and a set of freight cars.  We also ordered two Thomas engines and two Percy engines that came the next day - we figured I would not survive the kids fighting over one Thomas and one Percy, even for the two weeks until Sarah's birthday, so we proactively ordered duplicates of these favorite characters. And it was cute the other day when I heard Sarah say "Where is my "S" Thomas?", since Daddy even labeled the bottoms of the duplicates with the kids' initials!

The kids both have LOVED their new train track sets and we are constantly hearing them make up stories with either other and their engines: "Nathan, I need Thomas to shunt me to my Tidemouth Sheds!" (FYI "Tidemouth" is pronounced "tid-muth"), "Sarah, my wheels are wobbly!", "Express coming through!", etc.

Then most of the rest of the family joined us for dinner - Grandmother and Granddaddy, Gran and Pawpaw, and Uncle David - the only person we were missing was Aunt Bridget.

For dinner Nathan requested hot dogs and broccoli salad, and I added pineapple and potato salad to the menu.  And the cake?  Chocolate cake with chocolate icing, red words on the inside, orange decorative icing on the outside. 

Which brings us back to this...

And I love how since then he'll tell me "This is the first time I've been to school when I'm five" or "This is the first time I've come to Grandmother and Granddaddy's house since I was five".  Being five is turning out to be one special milestone for this sweet boy!

October Birthday Extravaganza: Nana's Birthday

We had a little break after Grandmother's birthday to gear up for Nana's.  This time I wanted to have a special evening for the birthday girl at our house, so we invited Nana, Granddad, David and Bridget over for hamburgers and cake. 

I had planned on the kids helping me make the cake (since they love to do that kind of thing), but life got in the way (sick Sarah, poor nights sleep for me, car battery dead).  So by the time I got around to making it, my motto was "get it done fast or not at all".  So we settled for the kids (one again) picking out the icing colors and then helping decorate with sprinkles and candles.  This time around we had a yellow cake with chocolate frosting - yum!

Unfortunately I didn't think about getting a family picture with all of us there, but we had a nice dinner together and the kids got even more practice blowing out candles.