Happy Birthday, Jack!

Jack turned SIX today!

Jack's Six-Year-Old Interview

1. What is your favorite color? blue
2. What is your favorite toy? my turtle toys
3. What is your favorite thing to eat? pizza
4. What is your favorite TV show? Dino Dan
5. What is your favorite outfit to wear?  my blue t-rex shirt
6. Where do we live? In Arizona
7. What are your favorite animals? a turtle and a tortoise
8. Where does Dad work? at his work in Arizona with the doctors
9. Where does Mom work? Lifetime Fitness
10. What is your favorite book? books about dinosaurs
11. What is your favorite thing to do outside? play tag at recess
12. Who is your best friend? Weston
13. What do you want to be when you grow up? a paleontologist
14. What's your favorite game to play? Mario Kart at Isaac's house
15. What do you like to take to bed with you? my cozy animals
16. What's your favorite thing to do with Mom? go to Feed My Starving Children (melt my heart!)
    
17. What's your favorite thing to do with Dad? go to the park with him
18. What's your favorite thing to do with David? go to the park with him
19. What's your favorite thing to do with Kate? play with her
20. What's your favorite treat? candy
21. What is your favorite movie? Daddy Day Care
22. If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go? Legoland
23. What makes you happy? going with mom somewhere
24. What makes you sad? David hitting me
25. What makes you scared? somebody spooking me
26. What is your favorite sport? running
27. What's your favorite flavor of ice-cream? cotton candy

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Things I want to remember about Jack at five:

• He has really been keeping track of exactly how old he is this year. He was five, then five-and-a-half, then five-and-three-quarters, and then then month of November he said that he was five-and-twelve-months! hahaha
• Jack is a collector (of junk or treasures, depending on whose looking at it ;) I would say that his top things that he loves to collect are sea shells, rocks, stuffed animals, and random crap ;) I think his love language is gifts because he treasures just about everything that he is ever given and remembers who gives it to him or where he got it from. 
• He still calls his stuffed animals "cozy animals" and that he always rotates what cozy animal he sleeps with every night :)
• He is creative. He loves art at school and at Lifetime Fitness, he loves working on projects, and he loves cutting and pasting just about anything he can get his hands on. 
• He is curious. He still loves learning just about everything about turtles/tortoises, snakes, sea animals, dinosaurs, and new this year are fossils and rocks. One of my favorite moments last month was when a bunch of his friends were playing at the park and he was over by the rocks looking for "lava rocks." When he found one he shouted, "YOU GUYS GOTTA CHECK THIS OUT!!!! I FOUND ANOTHER LAVA ROCK!" And they all looked at him like... why would we go over an look at a rock when we could be playing at the park?! hahaha
• He is still the pickiest eater in the world. I think I can can't on just two hands the non-junk/snack foods that Jack will eat without gagging, but last year I think I could count on just one hand so I will call that a win ;)
• He likes to sneak up on us and scare us in the morning. He is almost always the first one to wake up and he wakes up happy and with a smile on his face every day. By 8 pm he begs us to put him to bed at night :)
• He loves dance parties in the car or at home.
• He loves school and will get ready for school without prompting so that he can get there early to play on the playground. 
• He loves hiking.
• He loves nature shows. On the weekend when we all sleep a little longer, he will turn on "The Deadliest Catch" and watch it. It drives David crazy! haha
• Jack is sweet, sensitive, passionate, confident, quirky and tender-hearted. He is a kind friend. He is the nicest big brother. He is David's best friend and the best helper with Kate and loves making her laugh.  

These last six years with Jack have brought us so much joy, love and light! We love him and are excited to celebrate SIX with him!

Jack's fifth birthday post
Jack's fourth birthday post
Jack's third birthday post
Jack's second birthday post
Jack's first birthday post 
 

Things I'm Loving

•  Arizona sunrises and sunsets!!! 

 
 
 

•  The very bad and wonderful habit that we have gotten into of eating Bluebell Vanilla ice cream with brownie bits, health bits, banana bits, and caramel every weekend :)

• This picture that I took of Spencer that was not posed. Hahaha! He has picked up a pretty strong diet mountain dew addiction since moving to Arizona with his long and early commute every morning :)

• My little brother, James! He turned 25 earlier this month and I  can't wait to hang out with him next week! When James and I️ were little, we made a huge poster for my dad’s birthday that read, “HAPPY BIRTHLIN!!!” We were so used to writing “Wirthlin” that we didn’t even realize our mistake 😆 HAPPY BIRTHLIN to the nicest, coolest, spaciest, and luckiest person I️ know!!! 6 hours away is the closest I’ve ever lived to my family in my adult life and it’s so fun to get together with James and his cute little family so often!

•  Trips to the library. The play area is perfect for Kate. She loves it.

 
 

• Tuesday Kindergarten playgroup with these cute and crazy boys!

 

•  Having this picture as proof that I CAN be a fun pinterest mom ;) We made "fossils" to practice for Jack's birthday party.

• Cute/funny pictures of my kids

Love my cute dinos :)




David picked up Kate and said, "Mom! Take my picture with Kate! Mom, is Kate smiling for the picture?" hahahaha #toughlove

• Zoo trips with friends

• Family pictures at Phon D Shutton. The scenery was gorgeous

 
I think each of our kids have been kissed on the head by Spencer about 5 bajillion times as a baby. I love it :)

Kate always sticks her tongue out to the left. It cracks me up! 

Things I'm Loving

•  Volunteering at Feed My Starving Children with Jack. He was soooo excited to go and was the happiest little helper. 

 
 

• Our sweet baby, Kate! At her 6 month well check she was in the 60th percentile for weight and 90th for height.

Since she doesn't have a baby book...
 





 

•  Funny stuff my kids say. David told me, "Mom! I peed a little in my pants. Actually I peed a medium in my pants!" 
• My kids doing "big" things in the kitchen. Jack made his own breakfast the other day which is a game changer (see all that syrup! ha) and Kate is sitting in her booster chair. She's a little small for it but it works!

• Riding bikes!!! Our second child was the first to learn to ride a bike with no training wheels! Jack's not quite there yet but he was so excited for David! When David first started riding by himself, Jack exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! David! I need a double high five! David's rockin' it!" I sure love those sweet brothers :)

• Our running/biking trails. It's not quite the same as our Iowa bike trail but I feel grateful we are so close to the canal and other trails! 

Saturday morning walk with the early risers! 


Saturday morning walk with the early risers :)

Halloween 2017

We had a great Halloween! I love the month of October and all of the Halloween things, but my heart also missed fall this year :( Arizona is still mostly too hot in October so I'm glad we got to go to Utah at the beginning of the month and see some fall leaves! We had a ward Halloween party last weekend and we went as the Incredibles (again!). I *think* I can promise that this is the last year we will ever wear them but they are just too easy not to use over and over again! We've gotten a lot of use out of my parent's old costumes!

2014

2015

I loved having the ward party outside this year. In Iowa, our ward Halloween parties were always inside and then at the very end we would all go outside and trunk-or-treat as fast as we could because it was so dang cold. This year, everyone set up chairs and laid down blankets in a circle in a big field and the kids trick-or-treated that way. I liked it better than trunk-or-treating!




David and our next-door-neighbor, Saige. They are the best little buddies and play all the time together. I'm so grateful for Saige because she keeps David entertained for me when Jack is at school :) Plus, she is the cutest.

Kate's second of three costumes this year :) We got a Snow White and Tinker Bell costume handed down to us and I couldn't NOT have her wear both. She wore this trick-or-treating at Target on Saturday. Girls are too fun!




Spencer carved a pumpkin, Jack and David painted pumpkins, and I opted out this year :)

We went to "The Halloween House" in Gilbert on Monday night and it was a hit! The lights were in sync to music just like a lot of homes do at Christmas and it had two spook alleys on both sides of the house. It was a perfect and free alternative to a haunted house for little kids!


On Halloween, David had his Halloween party at preschool and Jack got to go home with a friend for a Halloween playgroup.



After school, we picked up Ghost Busters to watch because Jack and David were dying to watch it. David lost interest half way when he realized that the Ghost Busters were girls :)

I swear this happens every year, but by October 31st my kids were over trick-or-treating! Walking house to house seemed like too much work to them compared to other quicker trick-or-treating they've done beforehand. (Insert eye rolling emoji) We went down two streets and they were begging to go home, the lazy turds! haha
Jack was a pterodactyl, David was Leonardo, and Kate was Tinker Bell. I didn't realize until after I took this picture that we had a green theme going on! I am hoping that Jack is over his dinosaur stage by next Halloween because the variety of dinosaur species is limited once you are out of toddler sizes! This costume was a 5T and it was too short for him! haha







And a couple more throwbacks just for fun :)
2015

2016