Jack is five, with photos!

From our little family blog --


True story.  I birthed him, he got bigger, and now he's five!  Holy cow!  I'd say that the time has flown by, but that's not strictly true :).  However, we do love him dearly, and he is such a sweet, smart, funny five-year-old.  For his birthday he wanted a shark-themed party.  So I scoured Pinterest to come up with the best and least-complicated ideas, and I think it turned out pretty fun.  We had the party last Saturday, and Jack insisted that Mike and I decorate on Friday night after he was in bed, so that he could come downstairs on the party day and be surprised.  Very Christmas-esque.  I believe that he may have inherited my great sense of sentimentality when it comes holidays and birthdays.  We have a good time together :).  Anyway, back to the party, we had one of his friends over and he and Jack and Eli partied it up.  They played with a bubble machine that we got for the occasion that drained an entire bottle of bubbles in about 5 minutes flat.  Good thing bubbles are cheap??  They did a shark craft, made sharks out of food (with homemade graham cracker bodies, apple tails, and tortilla chip fins), played a lovely game of Pin the Fin on the Shark, and played Ocean Life Bingo [note to self: the two-year-old will be more interested in eating the chocolate chips than in using them in bingo].  For decorations we had put up a blue sea wall with shark fins and seaweed and shells.  We also hung green streamers in the stairwell so you had to walk through them to get downstairs.  This was a BIG hit.  Food, you ask?  Why yes, of course, we naturally had a shark-themed cake and ice cream and all of the components of the edible sharks, as well as pizza for lunch.  Naturally everything was homemade since it needed to be gluten and dairy free, so there was a substantial amount of work involved.  It was fun but exhausting.  I think that Jack had a really good time.  For gifts this year, Jack wanted some shark and snake stuff.  He's really into animals right now, and he actually knows quite a lot about certain ones.  Side note, we went to Sea World a few weeks ago, and when we walked into the shark exhibit he immediately started naming off what types of sharks he was seeing.  A little later one there was a placard with the names of the types of sharks, and he was dead one.  He's like a sponge I tell you, a sponge.  He's got a few favorite snakes:  Reticulated Pythons (he calls them "retics" for short), Black Mambas (named thus because the insides of their mouths are black . . . creeeeepy), and of course, the diamond-back rattlesnake because what's cooler than a snake that makes a menacing sound before it kills you?  Anyway, he loves sharks, snakes, spiders, the human body, and earth science/geology (earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.).  He got several books, some shark and spider and snake toys, firefighter outfits for him and Eli, and a Magic School Bus Human Body Science Kit [Very cool, by the way.  We made a stethoscope out of it the other day, and it was pretty awesome.].

Ok, on to the pictures.  We've got a wide assortment here, ranging from a picture of Mike that I think is from his last day of work at the firm to the trip we took to Utah during the two week break between jobs, camping, Jack's preschool graduation, to a visit from some of Mike's family (including Stephanie and her husband Adam and adorable daughter Annie), Jack's birthday, and some shots of Jack at his soccer class.  He has loved this class, and his coaches are awesome with him.  Eli was originally in the class with him, but he got mortally offended every time the coaches ever-so-politely reminded the class that "There are no hands in soccer".  I don't think it was so much that he likes picking up the ball with his hands as that he doesn't like being told what to do.  This happens frequently.  Anyway, now he sits on the sidelines with me and watches, but last week he insisted on bringing our football with him to Jack's soccer class, and then he tried to participate in the class using the football instead of a soccer ball.  It was really hilarious.

Click here to go to the Google+ album. [If you click on a picture in the album, it will bring up a slideshow with captions.]

I guess I should end this post with a note about Jack, since I started out talking about him.  He is a very kind, thoughtful, creative, genuine, sharp, happy, child.  We are so thankful for him and for the great brother he is to Eli.  Being a parent is often very -- trying -- but we have very good children who are our greatest treasures, and for that we are immensely grateful :).