Sam's birthday

I told Sam we could do whatever he wanted for his birthday. Thankfully, he didn't really take advantage of that outrageous offer and ask do to anything too extravagant.

First we headed to a local baptist church that has an awesome indoor play area for kids. Sam invited Carter and Harrison, his two besties, along.

Next Sam wanted to go through the car wash. He used to HATE it, but ever since I told him it's like the car is taking a shower, he likes it. But not the HEB car wash, the blue one.

Next was an elaborate lunch of his favorite - a cheesy tortilla and a smoothie.

Following naps, we went to the pool for a little while and then had Kirk and Gretchen over for dinner and presents. He was majorly spoiled and loved everything.

That cake turned out better than I thought it would.

 Carter was more than happy to help Sam open and examine each of his presents. It was cute.

Sam is great. He is usually a very good listener and tries to "choose the right" and "make good choices."

He picks out all his own clothes and I absolutely love it. I'm always excited to see what he comes up with. He just got two more superhero shirts for his birthday, but before that, he would wear the same superman shirt for days. Until we made him change it.

He is great with his numbers and I'm trying to help him with starting to read, but it's not really going anywhere, yet.

He wakes up early (6:30 or so) most days and takes a nap about every other day.

He likes to play at the gym and go to "school" - that free 90 minute preschool-type thing the school district offers.

He likes TV - too much for his own good. I need to be better about making him turn it off.

He is a joy and so much fun. We're so grateful for him. I'm excited for this next year. I've only got one more with him before he starts going to school, so I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. We love our Sammy man!

Sam's fourth birthday interview

We haven't had much going on lately. I tried to upload a video of the kids singing to Grandpa C for his birthday, but although it's uploaded on YouTube, it doesn't show up in blogger when I look at my youtube videos. Annoying.

Other things we've been up to:

We hosted two BYU folk dancers last week. That means they slept in our house, ate breakfast, and left. Two nights. Not bad. They were nice guys. Hosting also meant that we got two free tickets to their show. Dan was dying to go, but Gretchen won the arm wrestle, so she got the ticket. It was a really great show! Here's a picture of us with one of the dancers. Please note how amazing she looks after dancing for 2.5 hours and how pasty and tired I look after just watching. Yikes.

Here's the fam eating breakfast on a Saturday morning surrounded by...

ROCKWALL HOLDS. Yes, Dan is building a rockwall in our crawl space. He'll be done soon. Until then, here's a picture of what it looks like in there so far. It's not very tall, but because of the angle, it's definitely going to be challenging.

He's going to do that back wall, too.

We had K&G over for Mother's Day.

Our pomegranate tree has one fruit on it! Hey, one is better than none. We'll see if it hangs on long enough to ripen this fall.

Sam's birthday is Friday. He's been counting down the days for about two weeks. He sure is a cute kid. He wants an Iron Man cake. Not sure how I'm going to pull that one off. He's trickier than he looks. Tune in later this week to see if I succeed.

Trampoline match-up

Carter: 1
Sam: 0

And please forgive the smoothie 'stache.

Our week

I love my kids! Can't believe how much they grow in a year.

Last Mother's Day:

 This year:

Poor Afton had a major cold/runny nose yesterday. Dan took her home from church after Sacrament meeting. She picked out the turtleneck.

Earlier this week, Sam came down with a major case of hives. I'd never seen hives before so I was freaking out. At one point his entire body was covered in big welts. Dan calmed me down and said they'd probably pass in a few days. He was right. I also discovered that it's hard to take a good picture of hives. Can you see them?

Dan and I went on a date of Friday to see The Avengers. I give it 8.5/10. I don't know about Dan.

This weekend Dan worked on his secret project a lot and we had a nice Mother's Day. I'm lucky to be a mom to two sweet kids and a wife to such a great husband. I'm also grateful to have an amazing mom for an example.

Good, good, good, good intentions...

I thought I would be a great mom this week and take the kids strawberry picking one morning. It was only 30 minutes away, but Sam asked if we were almost there about 5 times. It was a nice little establishment. The owner explained that the strawberries were almost all gone but I might be able to find some over near the dumpster. I'm guess most other people didn't think to start by the dumpster...

We grabbed our buckets and got to picking. Sam picked about two before he said he had to use the bathroom. We trudged back to the small store they had and asked if they had a bathroom. They didn't and told us to just "go around back." When finished, we got back to the dumpster and I started picking again. Sam said he was done and would rather play in the sand. That was fine with me. Afton was content to sit for a few minutes. That's when I snapped these pictures.

 Then I noticed that Afton, who had previously been eating strawberries I fed her, was now eating rotting strawberries off the ground.

So I firmly told her "no!" and she proceeded to cry and either leaned up against me or tried to sit in my lap for the rest of the time, which made it hard to squat and pick strawberries. I kept picking until I couldn't take the crying anymore, we paid, and she screamed until we were about 10 minutes from home.

Maybe I'll try again next year. Maybe I won't!