Preschool Graduation

So you may remember that we were doing a preschool co-op with some other moms and their kids for Nathan’s preschool this year. Well, that year has flown by and last week we had preschool graduation! I still can’t quite believe it’s over and summer is already here. Nathan has loved going to preschool!

The kids put on a little program of nursery rhymes and songs. This picture sums up pretty much how Nathan felt about doing it while I was watching…

Awesome, right? I know. ;)

After the program they got their graduation caps and certificates.

This is his camera smile, ha ha

Afterwards, the kids made rockets to launch out in a field where we had a picnic lunch and I think everyone had a really good time. In the folder with his certificate, there was a little questionnaire they he had supplied answers to before graduation. I wanted to write down what he had said :)

Nathan - June 2017

My Favorite…

Color: pink
Food: Lightning McQueen Mac and Cheese
Thing to do: play with my Jackson Storm bath toy that Jason gave me
Book: about princesses
Animal: dinosaurs
TV Show: Hot Wheels and Bob the Builder
Thing I did in Preschool: playing

I don’t like dinosaurs to eat me

I’m really good at playing with garbage trucks

When I grow up I want to watch Dino Trux and Hot Wheels movie

I love it when my Mom hugs me.

I love it when my Dad go to work.

We were cracking up at the last two because Nathan is not a hugger, and that he likes when Dad leaves…? ;)

We are already looking forward to next year!

Nathan is 4!

Oh my goodness you guys. I have a 4 year old! We’ve had lots of birthday fun going on this week that I’m really excited to tell you about.

His birthday was earlier, and we did a few things to celebrate on his actual birthday. I had to run a few errands, but he got to pick out a couple of new cars to bring home. We got Chick Fil A and took it to John’s office to meet him there for birthday lunch. The boys always love to visit Daddy at work, so that was really fun. We had Nathan’s favorite meal for dinner (pasta with tomato cream sauce, aka “Nathan’s Favorite Pasta”) and brownies for dessert. After that was PRESENTS.

Spencer getting in the way… ;)
I think this has been his favorite thing so far. I was hesitant to get Legos, but he loves them and so far Spencer hasn’t tried to eat any…so…I guess we’re okay for now.
I think all of John’s dreams for fatherhood were starting to come true right here…at least until Nathan got bored with the building part and just wanted to play with the finished product, so I sped along the building process because Spencer was waving bags of Legos in my face saying “open NOW!”.
 
So they had a good time playing with his new presents. :)

Today we had a large-ish little party for Nathan and his preschool friends. I kept telling myself that I needed to keep it simple, but then I kept thinking of things I wanted to do and it got bigger and bigger (at least with the food – I just can’t help myself)

My biggest self-imposed task with the birthday cake. I had so much fun doing the Tiffany’s bridal shower cake that I was itching to make something else.

So I decided to go all out and make a pirate ship cake. SO FUN, right?!
If I had actually taken the time to plan this out better (I basically found a picture on pinterest and was like “oh yeah, I got this”) I would have done a few things differently, but overall I’m really happy with the way it turned out since I was totally ‘sailing’ by the seat of my pants here. I was realizing that even though I decorated a sculpted cake at pastry school, I have never actually made one with real cake (most of that one was styrofoam). So again, I was just kind of putting it together as I went along. ;)
And Nathan LOVED it, and that’s all that matters :)

Nathan doesn’t really do group party games, so I didn’t plan any games, but I had the kids make pirate hats and hooks and they all seemed to really enjoy that. Say “ARRRRGH!”

And they mostly just played – we had plans to go to the park for the first half of the party, but it RAINED ALL DAY TODAY. Lame. But I think they all still had fun playing here.

I had a fun table spread for lunch. This would be where the rest of the self imposed complexity happened. I love setting up themed food tables ;)

Chicken salad sandwiches for the moms and “sea serpent” (chicken) nuggets for the kids :)
I realize this is a misnomer, as it’s supposed to be citrus that prevents scurvy, right? Just work with me here…
I just HAD to make cookies too, you know ;)
I’m pretty sure the treasure map numbers were my favorites – I LOVED the way they turned out!
Spencer was SUCH a stinker and kept swiping cookies from the table. But he’d only take one bite of each one before moving on to another. After the 5th cookie I finally moved the whole platter back into the kitchen. He was kind of mad about that…

After lunch we had cake!! I put the candles into the sides to look like cannons :) We sang (and at the end of the song, Nathan got a surprise kiss on the cheek from his little preschool crush! eeek! All of us moms were DYING) and had cake and there was general chaos until it was time to send everyone home.

I’d say it was a success! Now to clean up alllll the kitchen mess I’ve made in the last week ;)

Happy birthday Nathan! We love you and are so glad you are a part of our family!

Easter Celebrations 2017

We had a whole weekend of family fun for Easter this year. It was soooo nice to have so much family time!

Ever since John started working out here he’s had Good Friday off, so we planned a trip to Port Discovery for the kids. It was still pretty busy because it was everyone else’s spring break, but it wasn’t too crowded and we still spent a good 4 hours there.

They still had the Thomas exhibit up, so that was really fun for the boys.

Saturday we had some Easter activities. After lunch we decorated cookies. Well, Nathan decorated cookies and Spencer ate his way steadily through his supply of frosting and sprinkles. And maybe a cookie. Or two.


After we got them all hopped up on sugar we put them down for naps and quiet time (Parenting Win – “You just go sleep all that off, buddy”). After that we got them all set up to color eggs. It was a little tricky with Spencer, I was mostly trying to make sure he didn’t spill all the colors all over the place and I only had one whisk that could fit the egg inside and into the jars we use for the color. We did come up with the idea to color on the eggs with crayons and he seemed to like that.

I’d only boiled a dozen eggs so we finished with that pretty quickly. John ended up taking the boys to the playground afterwards to get some extra energy out and so that I could work on dinner. Spencer came back looking like a chimney sweep, he’d faceplanted in the dirt so many times – good thing they were getting baths!

Easter morning the boys got to open up their “Easter presents”. They mostly got books (I really didn’t make an effort on candy – I’m hitting up the Easter clearance tomorrow, I’ve been waiting ALL YEAR for my starburst jelly beans!!) They also got matching Easter ties – because matching ties is seriously one of my most favorite things about having boys ;) John even got one too!

And I tried SO HARD to get a cute Easter picture of them matching. SO HARD friends. My kids are impossible ;)

I thought maybe adding John would help. Nope.

So we tried again later. We got some pretty hilarious ones though.

They amazingly kept their hats on at church. Nathan actually loved his and didn’t want to take his off and now that Spencer wants to be just like Nathan, well, that helped, haha.

We had a busy day at church and then we went over to some friends for an Easter egg hunt and a potluck dinner. (I forgot my camera for the egg hunt! so sad! But John strapped his GoPro to Nathan’s head for the egg hunt so we have some exclusive footage from his point of view). Then they basically had candy for dinner. And some strawberries. ;)

It has been such a fun weekend and looking at these pictures as I’ve been working on this post makes me so grateful for this crazy little family of mine. And I am so grateful for a Savior and Redeemer who made it possible to live again with our loved ones. I know He lives! 

Happy Easter!