Happy Birthday, Matthew!

Our sweet Matthew turned four yesterday! It was a very exciting day for him: he brought rice krispie treats with sprinkles to school to share with his class AND it was his show n' tell day.... big stuff!

Here's what's going on in Matthew-land right now:
-Matthew is still really goofy--he LOVES to do and say silly things in order to make people laugh. However, he is still quite shy and doesn't like having the attention of a group of people.

-He has a great time in his preschool class, but he doesn't like the idea of going to school. Every day he asks "is it my school day?" and if the answer is "yes," there are some tears and protests. I think Matthew thinks that if he goes to school, he'll be missing out on some super-secret fun at home. His teachers always say that he's fine when he's there. It's just the idea of going that bothers him.

-Matthew's favorite toys right now (or, still, rather) are trains. He loves setting up train tracks and running the trains on them. His favorite track configuration is a straight line (which really bothers his brothers, since he uses most of the straight pieces and leaves none for them).

-He still goes everywhere with his lovey, Saggy, and is an avid thumb-sucker.

-Matthew is a pretty good eater, but does not like "seeds" in his bread, and prefers his toast uncooked.

-He is really getting into cooperative imaginative play, which is wonderful in that he can now play more with Daniel. In fact, the other day I overheard them playing some pretend game together and just as I was thinking "wow! They're able to play the same pretend game nicely together," Matthew exclaimed "Daniel! You're letting me play with you!" Daniel was pretty nonchalant about it, but it was pretty sweet how excited Matthew was to really be playing along.

-Matthew has a few idiosyncrasies right now that are a bit difficult for us. One is that he doesn't like pants that are long enough to touch his feet. That makes getting dressed pretty difficult most days. For awhile all he wanted to wear were tight pajama pants....not quite appropriate for going out and about. Needless to say, we are very excited for summer so he can just wear shorts and we don't need to argue about the pants issue anymore. (And hopefully, after a long time not wearing pants, he will have forgotten about his trouble with them, too.)

-Matthew loves to sing. He can often be heard singing songs to himself. :)  His favorite TV show is "Wonder Pets," which is made in a sort of opera-style, and since watching it lately Matthew sometimes sings his sentences instead of just speaking. It's awfully cute.

-Matthew is an early riser. He wakes up around five every morning and comes into bed with us. Sometimes he shows up earlier, and often we have no idea when he came in. This would be fine if Matthew didn't like to sleep sideways and kick blankets off of him (and us). I'm hoping this is just a phase.

All in all, Matthew is a super sweet kid and we love him very much. He brings so much joy to our family and we can't wait to see how he grows over the next year. :)

 We had a little party for Matthew over the weekend. He was pretty excited about the cake...

With his buddies, Luca and Estela.

 Look how tall I am!

 All smiles on the way to school.

 It is so much fun to watch Matthew open gifts. He has such wonderful expressions and gets so excited about every gift.

 Auntie Laura helps Matthew figure out how to use the yo-yo that Aaron picked out for him.

 Boogie Board from Auntie Karen, Uncle Jesse and cousins in Maryland! This thing is awesome!

 Model bullet train! [Matthew has had some very specific gift requests for this birthday and last Christmas. Any time you ask him what he'd like, he says "model bullet train." He's never seen this before, so we're counting ourselves lucky that there actually is a model train set made for four-year-olds and there's a bullet train version. Oh, and it was reasonably priced, too. Here's hoping next time is that easy.]

 Extra cars for the train from Daniel! [At this point, Matthew was giving us a live version of that  video from a few years ago of a boy getting an xbox 360 for Christmas...]

 "My OWN binoculars?! Thanks Auntie Laura!"

 Since we had cake over the weekend, birthday dessert was homemade strawberry ice cream sundaes.

 Then it was off to the living room to set up that train!

 Making tunnels for the train to go through.

Learning all about how it works.

 Love.

Volcano!

The boys were lucky recipients of a paper mache volcano kit for Christmas. They were so excited to get it, and then we had a crazy busy winter and it was never the right time to build it. Until Easter Break...Chris had Monday off and was going to be heading out of town the next day for work, so the boys rolled up their sleeves and had a great time building the volcano together.

 Everybody got to help mix...

 ...and shape the volcano.

 Waiting for handwashing.

 Three days later the volcano was dry and ready for the boys to paint and decorate.

 Daniel decided it should be painted to look like Mt. Rainier.

 After the paint was dry, we added trees, dinosaurs and a horse (per Matthew's request).

 The finished product! Now all we needed to do was wait for Daddy to get home to help it erupt.

Daddy's back and is ready with the vinegar.

 There it goes!

It held up after many, many eruptions and we'll be able to erupt it again another day! What a fun gift--thank you, Kaelen and Damon!

Poppycock

There's a lot of tattling going on here. Everybody is concerned with what everyone else is doing wrong. A lot of this revolves around potty talk. We are deep in the throes of anything related to the bathroom being funny. And even though all three boys participate in the potty talk, they don't want anyone else getting away with using potty talk. Including Aaron. Aaron loves to say "bottom," and then chuckle to himself, but then he calls out Matthew for saying "toilet." The funny part of all this is that a lot of Aaron's words still don't come out the way they are supposed to, so most of the time when he tells us "Matthew is saying potty talk," it comes out as "Manu is saying poppycock."

This might be my favorite mispronounced word ever. "Poppycock" is so much nicer than "potty talk." :)

Easter!

I'm sure Lent seemed to drag on for the boys, but for us it flew by! Easter was much anticipated and we had a lovely day celebrating with family.

 The still-sleepy boys were excited about their baskets, as usual.

 All dressed and ready for Mass!

 We love Easter Mass at Blessed Sacrament. :)

 On the steps of the church, before heading to Aunt Tina and Uncle Randy's house for brunch.

Awhile ago, I found these awesome hats at Target for a dollar each. Easter seemed like the perfect time to wear them.

 Juice! This party is going to be off the hook!

 The hats are just too cute.

 Muffin time!

 After brunch the boys played croquet and soccer outside.

 And, can I just say how grown up this kid is looking? I mean, aside from the nice Easter clothes, he is just turning into a little man. :)

Happy Easter, everyone!

Oregon Coast Camping

 We haven't done a lot of family camping before, but we decided to give it a try as a fun 4-day farewell to the Eustermans, who are moving to Texas next month. The plan was to drive down the Oregon Coast, stopping at a few key sightseeing places and staying at a couple of KOA campgrounds along the way. The trip didn't go exactly as planned, but we did have a fun time with our dear friends just the same.

 On our way to Oregon, we stopped in Longview at Lake Sacajawea park for lunch. So far so good...until half of us stepped in a gift from a Longview dog (right at the bottom of a slide at the playground!).

 When we made it to Cannon Beach, the kiddos were more than ready to play in the sand for awhile. We don't have any pictures, but we were able to see lots of cool creatures in the tide pools here, and witnessed nature at its finest when a bald eagle swooped down and snatched a baby seagull off the top of Haystack Rock and flew off with it.

 We met a nice lady from Kirkland who agreed to take a group photo. :)

 Thoroughly cold from the windy beach, we were all excited to get to the campground and get the fire going.

 Aaron liked helping Mrs. Katie with the baked beans...

...but also liked taking breaks and swinging on the porch of the cabin.

 Mr. Matt doesn't mess around when it comes to cooking hot dogs for a crowd.

 The boys were excited about their bunk bed set-ups in the cabin.

 This was Matthew's first time sleeping on a top bunk. (Although, he had a really rough night and ended up in bed with us.)

While the kiddos were tucked away in their sleeping bags, the adults were able to chat by the fire for a bit. Little did we know this would be the only campfire for the entire trip. :(

 Next morning, we headed down the gravel path to the campground's pancake breakfast. These two spent a lot of time holding hands on the trip...

After pancakes, we packed up our things and hit the road again. We went back into the town of Cannon Beach for some coffee and walking around town. Good thing there was a fence blocking the way to the beach. We might not have gotten anywhere else.

 The drive along the coast was just beautiful.

 Photo-op stop for just the parents, since we can get in and out of the car faster.

 Meanwhile, this was happening.

Our next stop: the Tillamook Cheese factory!

 At this point, we discovered that poor Patrick had a fever. Katie and Patrick sat in their car while the rest of us ate lunch, toured the factory and had an ice cream treat.

 We decided to keep going to our next stop, Waldport, OR, and see how things went. When we got there, it was so cold and windy we weren't able to make a fire or really even be outside. The cabins at this KOA had tvs in them, so we ended up going into town and renting a movie for the kids to watch. We had another no-sleep night with Matthew and Aaron, and Patrick was still feverish, so we decided to ditch our plans to see the sea lion caves that day and just head home instead.

 Since we were right there, we stopped at the Yaquina Head Lighthouse for a little bit. 

 The beach there is made up of these crazy black "cobbles" that are hard to walk on, but perfect for throwing in the water.

 One last picture of all the kids.

And one more of the lighthouse.

Probably the most distressing part of our abbreviated trip for the boys was the lack of marshmallow roasting. Being Lent, we had told them that we'd wait to do marshmallows and s'mores on Saturday, our last night there. But since we changed our plans and came home, there were no s'mores to be had on the trip. So, to remedy that, we made our own backyard s'mores on Sunday.

 

And thus we completed our camping trip. It was really sad to have sick kids on such a fun occasion, but we're glad we were able to spend some time with our friends before they leave. And it really was for the best, as it turned out Matthew had a sinus infection (that he shared with some of the rest of us later).  Hopefully we'll get the chance to redo the trip another time. :)