Happy Birthday, Aaron!

Aaron turned three on the 16th. 

I think this was the most fun birthday to witness so far (although, I may be forgetting Daniel and Matthew's earlier birthdays...). 

Aaron was so excited to have a birthday, and he just LOVED having people sing the birthday song to him. 

 

 We sang and lit candles many times in the days surrounding his birthday, and every time he just sat there beaming as if having us all there celebrating him made this the best day of his life. Which makes sense (because he is three, after all)...

...but there was just something different about him than other birthday boys who have been a little uncomfortable with the attention (which also makes sense...they are their mother's sons, after all).

 Aaron had a fun birthday, especially because Auntie Laura had literally just gotten back from China.

 And of course, there were presents.

 Like bath toys.

And airplanes.

 And books. (His exact words were "Yes! A book!")

 And olives.

 And Dick's cheeseburgers and milkshakes for dinner!

 

 And let's not forget about the cake.

 A few days later we celebrated with the rest of the family...which meant more presents...

 ...and more cake!

Three-year-old Aaron's Top Ten Favorite Things (in no particular order)

1. His brothers
2. The Swedish Chef from the Muppets
3. Airplanes...especially the P51 Mustang
4. Baths
5. Olives. All kinds
6. Auntie Laura (or LaLa, as he calls her)
7. Cats, especially Auntie Laura's cat, Finn. (We play a lot of pretend games where he is Finn and I am LaLa)
8. Cake (this was also one of his first words)
9. Mom (because she makes the food)
10. Dad (because he plays the rough, tickling games)


Three-year-old Aaron is:

1. Passionate. There is no medium with Aaron. He is either really happy (and he'll tell you "I so happy!") or really mad. He has a fair amount of rage in him that shows itself anytime he is even slightly disappointed. This earned him the nickname "Angry Aaron" early on, and though we don't really call him that now, he still fits the bill.

2. Polite. When he isn't raging mad at you, he is very polite. He rarely ever asks for something without politely using "please," and is the one kid who most often says "thank you for the ______" without being prompted. (This is especially nice at mealtime).

3. Athletic. This kid is the most athletic toddler I've seen. He is super agile and has incredible balance. He will jump fearlessly off of anything (so watch out if you're within arms reach), and climbs as high as he can on any play structure we meet. He flips over in one fluid motion if you hold him by his hands in the air, and also learned to do this on the rings on our play structure. He flies down our sidewalk on his scooter, which makes anyone who doesn't know him nervous, but manages to stay upright and in control 99% of the time.

4. Independent. He takes after big brother Daniel in this department--usually saying "I do it myself" if you offer to help him with anything. Putting shoes on, buckling himself into the car seat, getting dressed, you name it and Aaron will want to do it himself. Or at least try for 10 minutes before accepting your help.

5. Helpful. Anything we do, Aaron is asking to help. Chores are now taking quite a bit longer to complete with all the "help" we're getting, but at least he's learning how to do things...right?

6. Sweet. If you say "I love you" or "I missed you" to Aaron, he usually replies in his very cute little voice "I love you, too" or "I missed you, too." Melt my heart.

Happy birthday, buddy! We love you oh so much. :)

Halloween and All Saints Day

We love costumes around here, so Halloween and All Saints Day are two of our favorite holidays. Thank goodness I started getting over my all-day morning sickness early enough to have time to work on costumes. :)

 The week before Halloween, our school had a family Halloween party. Here the first graders get ready to show off their costumes in the costume contest.

Grace the unicorn and Daniel the Seattle police officer did not win, but we still think they looked awesome.

This guy was our big winner of the night. He won the costume contest for preschool boys AND won a cake in the cake walk! Way to go, Matthew!

 On our way to do some pre-darkness trick-or-treating at Grandma Eva's house.

 These guys always love visiting Great-Grandma Eva, but on Halloween they get extra treats. :)

 This was our second year participating in the All Saints Day Mass at our church. We decided to pick non-warrior saints this year, and ended up with a St. Francis, St. Peter (who looks angry here for some reason) and St. Juan Diego.

 We forgot to take pictures of the rest of the many saints who showed up to celebrate with us, but here are our cute little saints outside the priory. Happy All Saints Day!

Fall Fun

We went on a little fall outing together over the weekend. Some friends had tickets to ride the on the historic Snoqualmie Railway that they couldn't use, so we were able to go in their place. The boys LOVE trains, so this was a super exciting trip for them.

 Waiting for our train ride, the boys checked out some of the other old trains near the station.

 Army medical train!

"How does this work?"

Here comes the conductor, we're ready to board!

The train travels pretty slowly to North Bend, then back up to Snoqualmie Falls before returning to the station. It was such a fun ride!

Afterward, we drove into North Bend to visit the town bakery for a treat.

The fun times didn't stop there. We were already way past naptime, why don't we continue on to the pumpkin patch? Matthew found this awesome old firetruck there.

 Aaron has an eye for the big ones.

 Daniel found his pretty quickly.

 Matthew tried out a few and finally settled on this one.

 What a fun day!

Happy Birthday, Daniel!

Daniel is seven.

Where does the time go??! He is such a joy to have in our lives... He is a wonderful big brother. He's incredibly bright and he's really loving his first grade class at St. Alphonsus. Daniel is affectionately known as our little engineer, as he loves to invent and build all sorts of structures and contraptions. He really enjoys playing soccer, and can often be found practicing his kicks in the back yard (one of which actually broke a board in the fence...). He's an avid bike rider--he wishes we lived closer to school so he could ride his bike there. Best of all, he is caring and compassionate, always looking to make sure people are taken care of. We love this guy!

Daniel's birthday weekend was a bit overshadowed by some other family events, so his birthday celebrations were drawn out over the next week or so. Here are the highlights:

Birthday pancake, the morning of.

The following weekend we had a birthday party at the park for his classmates. Daniel announced a few days before the party that he wanted it to be "Messi" themed...

We had lots of light blue and white Argentina decorations.

Hooray for friends and cupcakes!

Presents!

A couple days later we had a little birthday dinner with the extended family.

It's starting to take some real effort to blow all the candles out.

Can't believe this goofy guy is seven already. Love you, Daniel!

Dinosaur battle

Matthew likes "set-ups." His usual method of play is lining things up in a particular order and then staring at them. This applies to cars, airplanes, train tracks, even his blankets and stuffed animals on his bed. Recently we had the dinosaurs out. He created a set up of different dinosaur "teams," then they had an epic battle.

 Setting up the teams.

 Team one.

 Team two.

 The battle begins.

 There was lots of roaring.

 And falling on the ground.

 Deciding his next move.

 Tiger shark gets thrown into battle.

 Regrouping the teams.

 Team one took the high ground. But team two quickly took over.

 They were left like this...ominously staring at us for the rest of the day.