Samuel, You are FIVE years old!! You're so excited to be five and the coolest five year old I know.
You have a unique personality and I love that about you. Your personality is pretty different than your brother and sister. You're special and God made you in the best way. It's a joy to watch you grow and learn and be you!
You are so independent. I think that's the thing that stands out to me the most about your personality. You just prefer to do things yourself without help. You rarely ask for help. You'll tell me you're hungry and before I can get to the kitchen to make your breakfast, you're in there pouring your own cereal. If you make a mess or have a spill, you'll just grab a towel and clean it up without saying anything. You're happy to play by yourself and don't need us watching you or playing with you all the time.
You're independent, but you're still super social. You love to play with your siblings and friends. You and Elisabeth can disappear upstairs and play for hours. And when Nathan is home, you all disappear and play outside until I force you to come in. You love to have friends over and play with friends at school.
You live life at your own pace, and it's way slower than my pace, ha! It frustrates me often, but that's my issue, not yours. You convict me to slow down and not always be in such a tizzy to get places. You're always the last one finished eating (at home and at school). You trail behind the rest of us when we're walking somewhere. You're the last one in the car when we are leaving the house. I also feel like you're in your own world a lot of the time. I have to repeat myself over and over and over because you're just not listening. I'm not sure where you are or what you're thinking about, but it takes a lot to get your attention sometimes. You're probably thinking about something really profound, but I can never get over how you just don't hear things so often.
You're a planner and a builder. You come up with these huge ideas of things you want to do - build a fort, build a house, etc and your first step is always to draw a plan for your project. You do get frustrated when you ask for three giant pieces wood and I tell you that we don't have any. I know it's unreasonable that we don't keep all your supplies on hand all the time :), but I love that you have big ideas and never feel like you can't complete it.
You like to build and play outside, but your other love is any sort of drawing or arts and crafts project. You love to sit and draw and color and paint and create so many cool things. You have excellent fine motor skills and I'm always impressed with your drawings (and they're hanging all over the house).
You are THRIVING in pre-k! Ive always been a little worried about you and school. I felt like your attitude toward school has always been take it or leave it. You've always been just as content to stay home, but once you started pre-k, you love school and are learning so much. For some reason you don't respond well to me trying to teach you things. We both get frustrated, but at school you love to learn and come home wanting to practice and learn more. I remember one day this year that you had to miss school because you were sick, and your first response was, "But how am I going to learn my letters?!" You know all your letters (upper case and lower case), their sounds and are learning to start sounding words out and learning sight words. You've come SO far this year. It's been a reminder to me also to calm down and let you learn and grow at your pace and not my pace. You teach me so much, Buddy!
You love your teachers and have made so many good friends at Pre-K. It's fun that you have your own friends instead of just tagging along with Nathan and his friends. You run and hug your friends any time you see them, and get so excited to have play dates with your little buddies.
You are the sweetest thing! Every single morning as soon as you wake up, you come and find me and give me a hug (and you give the best hugs). I look forward to it everyday. You love to snuggle any time that you can.
You can be shy and reserved or you can be silly and hyper. We never know what Samuel we're going to get. Your teachers never know either. You keep us guessing. It takes a lot to get you really excited, which I kind of love because your smiles and excitement mean so much more when we get them from you. Your birthday party, vacations, and your baby sister were all things that got you to light up big time this year!
Your favorite toys are any outside play equipment, building toys, art supplies, and stuffed animals. You like to do ninja tricks, conquered the monkey bars this year, and like to play school and put on shows with Nathan and Elisabeth.
You've been on a Storybots kick lately and that's what you watch most of the time. You learned about Storybots at school and have been hooked ever since. You're always rattling off facts that you learned from the show and singing all the songs. You were talking about what the sun was made out of the other day.
Your favorite foods are pancakes, mac and cheese, any kind of fruit, granola bars, and cereal. Green beans are your favorite vegetable. You also like strawberry milk. You fight me at dinner whenever we're having a new or different meal. We battle a lot, but you're starting to grow out of it a little, thankfully :).
You're pretty laid back and easy going, but little things will set you off and you'll get super upset about little things- missing part of a show, someone making a mess, things not going according to your plan. It comes on so suddenly it always surprises me, but thankfully you can calm yourself down pretty quickly too.
Samuel, you are an integral piece of our family. You remind us to slow down, and remember what's important, teach us new things, and remind us that we all need hugs and snuggles everyday. We all love you so much. I can't wait for all the things you'll learn and experience as a five year old. You're a joy!
Samuel's birthday and Spring Break were definitely the highlights of March for our family, but we had some fun during the rest of the month too.
Nathan received a character award for gratitude at his awards assembly. He also was recognized for being a star reader. I'm so proud of him and how well he's doing in school.
His best friend Kamryn got a character award too. These kids are so sweet!
It's pretty normal to have a super hero at our house.
Matt was out of town the first weekend in March, and the kids and I had a crazy busy day. I gave myself a pep talk to make it through and we all survived and had fun.
Our day started with Nathan's last basketball game of the season. He had a great season and improved a lot from the beginning of the season. He's looking forward to playing again next year.
His team had a pizza party after his game to celebrate the end of his season.
These Cuties were my lunch buddies :)
After the pizza party we headed straight over to Ainsley's house for her fourth birthday party. She had a super hero party and the kids had fun playing, eating snacks and jumping on the trampoline. It was a fun party!
I looked out once and saw Samuel jumping by himself on the trampoline. I love how independent he is.
After the party we celebrated surviving the day with McDonalds and a movie night :)
This girl misses her daddy when he's gone but she likes the extra cuddles. She has to fall asleep in her bed at night, but I don't mind if she comes downstairs in the middle of the night to sleep in our room. Normally she has to sleep on a pallet on the floor, but she got spoiled when Daddy was gone and got to sleep in our bed. She usually comes down once or twice a week to sleep with us, but she was in my bed every single night that Matt was out of town :)
Nathan had a fun play date with his friend Levi one afternoon. He's learned a lot about Minecraft from Levi, so of course they spent a lot of time playing it while he was here.
And this month I also got to meet Miss Laura (aka Katherine's BFF). I love raising babies together with Erica :)
Dailee got to come and spend an evening with us. We all had fun playing with her. 18 months old are fun, and she's super sweet. It was a glimpse into our future when Katherine gets a little bigger.
Samuel built a fort and slept in it for a few nights. I love him.
This Cutie was ready for church!
The day after Samuel's party, we got to party with Kamryn at Soccer City. The kids had a great time.
And we had a fun princess play date with Ainsley this month too. Elisabeth loves having friends over and the little girls always play so well together so the moms get to visit.
Whew, March was busy and a little stressful with Matt traveling, but also full of lots of fun!
Wednesday morning we loaded up and headed out of town to Branson. We had told the kids we were going on a vacation for Spring Break but kept the location a surprise. We gave them hints every night and they figured it out the day before we left and were SO excited! We went to Branson and stayed at a hotel with an indoor waterpark and planned to go to Silver Dollar City.
Matt and I both knew we were a little crazy to take three kids and an infant by ourselves to a water park and amusement park, but we pushed through our crazy and our anxieties and did it, and I'm so glad because we all had a wonderful time. We have to be intentional in doing things with the kids even when they're hard. If we kept saying, "We'll wait until Katherine is older to do this or to do that" we'd miss out on so much fun with the kids.
We got to Branson around lunchtime and stopped to eat at Braums for lunch. The kids thought Daddy's vacation rule that we eat ice cream everyday on a vacation was a good one :).
We got to our hotel around 1:00 and our room wasn't ready, so we ran over to the outlet mall for an hour. The kids were not super cooperative or patient, but we managed to get some new shoes, swim suits, and Daddy got some much needed new jeans.
We were at Old Navy, and Elisabeth asked for some new water shoes. Nathan wanted to know why she got so many new shoes, so I asked him if he wanted to look for some new shoes, and his response cracked me up. He said, "No, I don't want any because that will take longer." He's just like his dad :). At least my girls will like shopping.
We headed back to the hotel and while Matt waited in line to get our room, the kids and I changed and headed to the water park. They ran and played and swam for two hours. The boys loved this huge bucket drop that dropped water on them every few minutes. When Matt joined us, we took a family float along the lazy river. Katherine did great in the water. She loved to splash in the toddler splash pad and she even liked going down the toddler water slide with Elisabeth. We had a great time!
When we all started to get hungry, we changed clothes and headed out to dinner. Elisabeth's favorite, favorite meal is spaghetti and meatballs, and the boys like it too, so I knew we had to go to Pasgettis for dinner.
We had to wait for a table and the kids were starving, but they behaved really well for being so hungry and tired. They chowed down as soon as the waitress brought some bread sticks to our table, and they enjoyed their giant meatball and spaghetti.
It was after 8:30 when we left the restaurant, and Nathan was so shocked that we ate dinner so late. He said, "I can't believe we were eating dinner when it was our bedtime." Ha! We get crazy on vacations :)
We went back to our room and called it a night because we had big plans the next morning!
We woke up early on Thursday and grabbed breakfast at the hotel and headed straight for Silver Dollar City. We wanted to get there early because we knew it would be crowded for Spring Break. Here's a little glimpse of our crazy at 8:45 in the morning.
We made it to the park before it opened and anxiously awaited the rope to drop so we could ride rides. Elisabeth kept asking over and over on Wednesday to ride the little rides at the outlet mall. I kept telling her she could ride an extra ride on Thursday instead of riding those.
We had planned to ride a big roller coaster (the Powder Keg) first thing since we knew the line would get long later in the day, but we found out that they couldn't open that coaster until the temperature warmed up, so we headed to Fire in the Hole since it was right next to it. The boys loved Fire in the Hole (Samuel said it was his favorite ride), and Elisabeth hated it. She got scared in the middle and cried and asked to get out for the whole rest of the ride. Mom fail.
I thought she might be ruined for the rest of the day, but I took her over to the little kids area while the boys rode a big roller coaster with Matt and she recovered.
She did say that she didn't want to push the button to go high on the butterflies because it was too scary.
While the girls and I hung out and Elisabeth rode the little kid rides, the boys run Thunderation. I can't believe they are big enough (and brave enough) to be riding the big coasters. Samuel is fearless.
We joined back up at Fireman's landing and rode the rides there.
Elisabeth asked several times to meet the Fire Dog. She was disappointed when we told her there weren't any Disney characters at Silver Dollar City :).
I think Nathan was a little bored (and impatient) riding the smaller rides, but we encouraged him to have a good attitude. Before lunch the kids played in the Fireman play place. Nathan remembered it from two years ago when we went to SDC and asked over and over to play in it.
When Matt and I got too hungry for lunch, we made them stop playing and went to eat.
After lunch we headed to the Grand Exposition to ride some more rides.
The kids loved the ship. Elisabeth looked terrified during the whole ride, but as soon as it was over she asked to ride it again. We also forced her to ride the flooded mine (because it was the only ride our whole family could ride together- Katherine could ride it too), and she hated it as much as Fire in the Hole. She kept saying, "I knew I wouldn't like it, I knew I wouldn't like it." Oops! Katherine was fine, ha!
During the afternoon the lines were super long, so we took a break and let the kids play on the playground and went to a comeday/magic show and stopped for a snack.
By 5:00 the kids were ready to ride again. The line for the Powder Keg was super long, and I didn't think we'd get to ride it. Nathan was really disappointed. We had talked it up to him and it was the ride he was most looking forward to riding.
Elisabeth asked to ride the big swings, and we had to take turns riding it three times for all the kids to get a chance. During Samuel's turn, they had to stop the ride early because someone wouldn't put their cell phone away after being asked by the attendant six times. Grr. But, it turned out okay because we were standing at the front of the line waiting for Nathan's turn to ride and some people complained about the ride being short. The attendant gave them a fast pass to any ride in the park, and I overheard them, and then politely asked for one too! We were going to get to ride the Powder Keg after all :)
We rode a few more rides in that Grand Exposition area and then headed to the Powder Keg.
We did rider swap, so Matt and I could both ride. Nathan and I were up first. We had told Nathan he had to keep his head against the head rest because the coaster accelerated so fast. He was so worried about that rule. He talked about it over and over. "When do I put my head back?" "Do I do it now?" "How long do I have to keep my head back?" Ha! I almost wish we wouldn't have said anything until the ride started.
I watched him during the ride, and he looked terrified. When we got off, he said he thought he was going to die, and then in the next breath asked to ride it again! He said it was his favorite ride of the day.
Then it was Samuel's turn. I didn't get a good picture, but I had to document his tiny little feet dangling in the car. Matt said he was really still and looked like he was in shock during the whole ride, but as soon as he got off he asked to ride it again. He said it was his second favorite ride of the day.
We finished the ride at 6:55 (5 minutes until closing), and the kids insisted on riding one more ride, so they ran across to Fire in the Hole. Elisabeth sat that one out :).
We arrived at SDC at 8:45 that morning and headed out at 7:15.
It was an awesome, memorable, fun, tiring day! I can't believe that the kids lasted all day, and Katherine did awesome. Best. Day. Ever.
Elisabeth crashed as soon as we started driving to the hotel. We wore her out!
When we got back to the hotel, Samuel was shocked that our room was clean. We explained that hotels have people that clean the rooms everyday. And his response was, "I wish they did that at our house, so we didn't have to clean up." Me too, Buddy, me too.
Matt ran and grabbed a pizza for dinner and Katherine and I chatted about how our crazy family opened the park and shut it down. I still don't know how we did that, Baby Girl :)
Friday morning we had a lazy morning since the water park didn't open until 10:00. We had donuts for breakfast, and packed and loaded the car and then headed to the water park for the morning. We had a fun morning playing in the water.
All the swimming wore that baby out :)
We swam until around 1:00 and then changed, grabbed lunch and played a round of mini golf at the hotel before we left town.
We drove home about 3:00 that afternoon. We had such a fun time together as a family playing together, relaxing together, and making memories together. Family vacations are my favorite :)
