A fire station party

Yesterday the birthday celebrations for Drew continued with a small party for Drew and two of his friends. We gathered at our house, then made the trip to Battle Creek to visit the fire station. It ended up working out very well and everyone had a great time. At the end of our visit to the fire station, we took this picture, which I think gives you a taste for the excitement of the fire engine and the fire station. Before going to the fire station, we had kids running around our house wearing hats and blowing on noisemakers. The energy level stayed pretty high throughout the entire trip. The 3 to 4-year-old crowd is energetic!!

We also had birthday cupcakes (Drew chose them) at our house and sang to Drew. We had a total of four kids, so each cupcake had a candle in it and each kid got to blow one out. It worked out well!

Kate thoroughly enjoyed her cupcake!

Kate was big-eyed as we arrived at the fire station in Battle Creek. She loves the fire station and visiting Uncle Todd.

We got to try a little of everything at the fire station and that included Uncle Todd's fire helmet. That thing is heavy! Drew's favorite part of the fire station: seeing Uncle Todd's bed. Apparently it is fascinating that Uncle Todd sleeps at the fire station while on duty (although Todd didn't sleep much last night after we were there).

Drew thought it was funny when I wore Todd's helmet. He likes to tell me, "Dad, you're not a firefighter!"

I'm not a firefighter, but I can always pretend! Todd helped me get decked out in all the gear. I told Jana that I could pass for a firefighter, except for the beard. Firefighters can only have facial hair below their lips or above it (hence the high percentage of firefighter mustaches).

Kate made herself at home in the fire engine.

Todd got all geared up too and showed us that we don't need to be afraid of firefighters when they come to rescue us.

All the kids took turns approaching Todd and listened to his weird breathing through the mask.

Kate was fascinated by Uncle Todd in his mask and helmet.

Did everyone have fun at the fire station? Ummmm....yeah!

Todd demonstrated some of the equipment for the kids, including his marvelous bat catching technique. Probably didn't know that your local fire department can do that, did you?

The kids were quite interested in the tools inside the fire engine. The quote of the day came when we first walked into the fire station and upon seeing the fire engine, a child exclaimed, "Whoa! How did you built that??"

Todd took out some of the tools for the kids to hold. Parental blood pressure was probably the highest during this part of the visit, but everyone did a great job keeping their tools on the ground and just holding them.

At the end of our visit Todd opened up the doors to the fire station and we got some pictures of the kids on the front of the fire engine. I started with one of those pictures at the beginning of this post, and I'll finish up with a few more.

Here's a final video from the fire station that captures some of what we were doing. Todd put the lights on and run the siren a bit for the kids (which was very loud). It was wonderful because the room with the fire engine is entirely enclosed, so the kids could run around and on the fire engine and we didn't have to worry about them getting into anything.

Drew had a great time with his friends and was very proud of showing off the fire engine. Thanks to Todd and crew at station 5 for helping us with the visit. It was fun!!

Happy Fourth Birthday Drew!

This week we celebrated Drew's fourth birthday. Happy Birthday Drew!! We had fun telling Drew the story of how he was born. We talked about going to the hospital with Drew in mom's belly and having him come out and come home with us. Drew must not have put much thought into it before because he immediately starting asking how he got out of mom's belly. He even asked if we cut open mom's belly to get him out (that's not how it actually happened). We finally settled on him coming out of the "birth canal" and he seemed satisfied with that answer . . . for now. Anyhow, in honor of Drew's birthday I needed to post the first picture of me holding my son four years ago. He was tiny! Our boy was so little at first. Look at the size of Jana's hand next to his little head! Wow!

Now Drew is HUGE. This past week at school he was student-of-the-day again for his preschool class. In honor of his birthday, his teacher made this fabulous hat for him to wear. It's quite the hat! To give some idea of Drew's size, he's currently about 44 inches tall and weighs about 43 pounds. His shoes are size children's 12 and he wears boys small shirts. When he was born he was 20 inches long and weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces. He's been growing!

You can get an even better sense of Drew's incredible hat in this picture. Wow, it is something, isn't it? :) As part of being student-of-the-day Drew brought in a fire truck for show-and-share. He was beaming walking in carrying his fire truck and had fun telling his class about his uncle Todd, who is a real firefighter. Drew was also able to tell them about his dream of becoming an "uncle firefighter" some day.

On the actual day of his birthday Drew celebrated with his daycare friends and they ate cupcakes that Jana baked and sent along. After daycare, we allowed Drew to choose our restaurant for a birthday supper in his honor. Drew chose the Pizza House for Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Good choice! We ate wonderful pizza and enjoyed a free dessert that Drew garnered for his birthday (brownie, ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped topping). Afterward, we opened a few presents from Jana and me that included a S.W.A.T. uniform. You might guess who picked that out! Here Drew is below in his new vest and Kate is trying out the helmet.

Kate was wonderful througout the celebration of Drew's birthday and Drew has done a good job of sharing new toys with her.

Here's a final video of Drew and Kate during the present opening with us. They were both very excited!

Pony

Lately we've been doing some painting around our house. Not painting the walls, but Drew and Kate have gotten into some painting. Jana pulled out some of my old shirts, got the kids well covered, and let them have at it with the paints. Kate didn't get the real deal, but instead got to dabble a little with watercolors. Much easier to clean up!

For a while now we've been praying with Drew in his bed before he goes to sleep. Several months ago we started including Kate in this part of our nightly routine. We read a story and have a snack on the couch, then at the end of the story, Kate runs to Drew's room yelling, "Jesus!" As you can tell, they have tremendous fun sitting on Drew's bed and praying together with us.

Since I've last posted we've had some snow here in the Lansing area and the kids have helped me shovel several times. Here they are all bundled up for the weather and helping me shovel. Kate uses Drew's small spade and Drew uses his snow shovel. They're very helpful :)

This is probably the oddest looking snowman you'll see, so we had to take a picture of it. It has two crackers for "googly" eyes and a carrot nose. It was so cold out the day after we built this that I wet the carrot a little and it froze into the snowman. Drew was quite proud of this creation and commented on it every time we pulled into the driveway.

Jana and I have been enjoying some of the simple pleasures in life. One we try not to enjoy too often is Quality Dairy's "Death by Chocolate" ice cream. It is pure deliciousness. A pleasure we enjoy every single night is checking in on Drew and Kate sleeping. We never can get enough of that!!

A cold, snowy girl coming in from helping me shovel. You can't see her hood, but it was filled with snow. Drew gets a little crazy with his shoveling and doesn't always look to see where the snow is going!

A toy went under the stove and we had to rescue it.

Is Kate wearing her heels? Why yes, she is. Kate got these play shoes and wears them all around the house. How that can be comfortable, I have no idea.

Kate's hair is finally getting long enough to do things with it. At daycare, her favorite thing is to get her hair put up in a "pony," which is her shorthand for ponytails. She loves having her hair done and will walk around the house saying, "Pony. Pretty. Pony. Pretty."

Here's another attempt at a photo of Kate's hair. We tried FOREVER to get these two shots. Finally, we gave up and just enjoyed playing with her.

After giving up on photos, I tried taking this video. Kate's hair is highly amusing to us, so we are trying to show it off as best we can. Enjoy!

Christmas 2009

It's way past Christmas, but it's finally time to post on our Christmas 2009 experience. The most memorable part of Christmas this year was our effort to begin the process of training Drew and Kate in generosity and gratitude. For some reason, the "I want stuff" bug caught Drew for the first time this year, so we've been working hard on gratitude for the things you have and also implementing ways for the kids to be generous.

One way of working on generosity is that Jana and I decided that presents for each other this year would come from the kids. Drew and Kate were encouraged to put some thought into it and to choose a present for mom and for dad. We talked extensively about picking something that the other person would like and would show some thought. After spending lots of time on it, the kids came up with some excellent presents, including Jana's present pictured below . . . bleach!! I should offer some explanation of this particular gift. Drew was the originator of this idea and he knows that mom "likes to do laundry" so he thought it would help. He also convinced me that she needed a new off-white bathrobe (it's a nice bathrobe, actually) and that the bleach would help keep it clean. Clearly, he put some thought into this and is making a great effort to understand his mom! From Drew and Kate, I got a hand saw, some paint brushes (because I like to paint the rooms in the house), and a toolbox (that Drew wanted :) Jana and I were both thrilled with their choices and touched by the reasoning behind their gifts. The kids are immensely proud of their gifts and love to watch us use them. I think we've started a new tradition!

In an effort to fit with the spirit of our Christmas, I don't have a lot of pictures of gifts or gift opening, but we are extremely grateful for all that we received this year. Below is a representative picture of Kate opening a present with Drew helping. Drew did a great job this year of helping Kate open her presents without taking it over. It was fun to watch him help her.

They have also done a pretty good job with sharing presents. Not always, but most of the time! Kate received this train set and they both quickly took to playing with it. After some initial sharing issues, they settled in to play together.

You can see that as they played longer, Kate and Drew interacted more and more. Drew is either making a car noise or a train noise here :)

Drew has been treating us to "songs" of his creation for quite some time. He will use just about anything he can find to turn into a guitar for accompaniment, so he was very excited to try out his guitar. He strums away on it and sings some of the most horrible, yet endearing notes. We love listening to his songs. What Drew lacks in training, he makes up for with enthusiasm!!

This year in daycare Drew and Kate made ornaments for our tree. Kate's is the snowman below that she colored herself, while Drew's is the ball in front of the hippo (not sure why Drew put it so close to another ornament).

Kate is beginning to work on potty training, and she was thrilled to receive a pair of princess underwear for Christmas.

Although she clearly doesn't totally understand the concept of underwear yet, as she loved having them on over her diaper and tights and proceeded to strut around the house showing them off. I hope she's super-modest someday and I can pull these pictures out to show her :)

My mom has been busy knitting and she made everyone in my family slippers. After receiving them, we all gathered around for a slipper picture. I hope this is the first and last picture my family takes of all our feet.

Kate loved this doctor's kit and immediately came over to check me out with it (although I think this was Drew's present). Jana took this picture as I thoroughly enjoyed my daughter giving me a check up.

Drew was an equal-opportunity helper all Christmas with other people's Christmas presents. Here he is giving Jana a hand with opening a present.

Kate is so excited about shoes, the she grabbed a jewelry holder from one of Jana's presents and tried to put it on her feet. Kate also got some dress up shoes that I'll have to find a picture of her wearing. She's quite stylish.

Another picture of Drew and Kate working together to open a present. We had a wonderful Christmas and completely enjoyed the time spent together with family. What a fun time of year and fun age for Drew and Kate!