I spent a good chunk of this last week in the "deep cough" stage of a nasty cold, which catapulted me back into the "throwing up at night" stage of pregnancy. Last week I said I was done with nausea updates so I won't say much more about it, but it was NOT FUN and the next person who dares bring home another cold/virus this spring is canceled.
Speaking of viruses, Jack caught a 24-hour stomach bug and spent Friday and Saturday throwing up. He's fine now and so far me and Jared have been spared. It's a birthday/Mother's Day miracle!
Ok, birthday stuff! Yesterday was my 30th birthday AND Mother's Day. All said and done, it was a lovely weekend. Jack was feeling fine on Saturday morning so we spent the day my favorite way--day trip to explore somewhere new. We went to Leavenworth, which is a little Bavarian-themed village in the Cascade Mountains. We had just enough time to explore some shops, walk the streets, have a German meal on an outdoor rooftop terrace, walk along the river, and enjoy an ice cream. At this point Jack started to look a little pale and say his tummy hurt, so we cut our day short and booked it to our car to make the 2-hour drive home. Jack spent the first half of the drive throwing up (thank heavens for my foresight to bring a barf bowl just in case), and the last half of the drive sleeping. Poor little guy. After we got home I made dinner (yay for being able to make dinners again!) and got Jack to bed, then Jared and I watched a movie and went to sleep. Here are some pictures of Leavenworth. My favorite part of these Bavarian villages is the trim work. I love the scalloped edges and fun cutout shapes on all the shutters. Jack's favorite part was the horse-drawn carriages wandering the walkways. He wanted a ride so bad but it was $40 a person. Nooope. Maybe on his birthday we'll track down a horse-drawn carriage situation.
^^Jack texting Jared while we waited for our ice cream. I know it's blurry but it says, "Montana" "Woshigton (washington)" and "Terex (t-rex)." He's getting pretty good at spelling and he learned how to text Jared this last week from my phone, which is the cutest thing ever. I'm letting him take spelling and reading at his own pace, since he's only just 4. He knew his alphabet and letter sounds by age 3, but when I tried to encourage reading at that age I found that he'd get annoyed if I asked him to sound out more than 2 or 3 words in a book. So I laid off and I'm loving watching him ease back into it on his own.
On Sunday morning I woke up to a kiss on the cheek from Jack and a birthday breakfast in bed. Jared made breakfast sandwiches and blueberry muffins, which were so good. I opened up some homemade gifts from Jack--lavender bath salts and a dish towel with a handprint flower painted on it. Heaven bless preschool, so cute. I also opened a Mother's Day gift from Jared--a regal portrait-style painting of Savvy he commissioned for me, lol. I'll have to take a picture of it for next week's post. It was a nice Sunday and we both got a nap and squeezed in a family walk before Jared's mom and brother came over with dinner, an adorable cake, and presents (his dad is in Ireland on business). I am a lucky lady, and it's wonderful to have some family around to celebrate each other. 
I'm sure I'm going to say this in every post for the next year, but I love age 4! (yes, yes, I know we've likely got some turbulent sibling dynamics in our future but let me live naively in this little bubble for a few more months.) We still get meltdowns and tantrums sometimes, but not as frequently as the toddler years, and the activities at this age are more up my alley. One day last week we spent all afternoon making dinosaur fossils from oven-bake clay I had on hand. Then the next day Jack spent all morning painting them while I sat nearby and compiled a recipe book I've been trying to get to for over a year now. Then since the paints were out he carried on painting dinosaurs in his sketch book. Look at that nice little pencil grip on his paintbrush! Heaven double bless preschool, I would've never thought to teach him that. (also enjoy my festive Halloween jammies that are the comfiest outfit that still fits me so they have become my Friday uniform.)
Another great Jacktivity from this week is an assignment he gave himself to type out the names of all 100 dinosaurs from his dinosaur encyclopedia into a word document on our desktop computer. He came up with the idea on his own while he was playing with Jared last night. Brought his book to the computer and typed out probably 10-15 dinosaur names. Then this morning he told me he wanted to keep working on it and he spent an hour typing another 30 or so dino names, ending with Quetzalcoatlus. I was even able to draft most of this blog post while he did it! And when he was finished he came and asked me to show him how to save the document so he could finish working on it tonight when daddy gets home. We love a goal-setting king.
^^Jack checking out his little dinosaur bone souvenir we let him pick out in Leavenworth.
An impromptu photoshoot with Jack's beloved bunny in our guest room. I'm finally pulling it together in preparation for my brother's family to come visit next month.. Eventually I'd love to paint or try my hand at wallpaper in here, but it's low on the projects list and won't happen for a few years. I got curtains up today and now all that's left is to get art on the walls.
