Jack turned six yesterday! He's growing up so fast. Luckily he's not sad about it. Last night when I was in his bathroom getting his toothbrush ready I overheard him singing to his stuffed bunny: "Oh ya! Woo-hoo! I finally turned six!" I love him so much. I asked Jack a few birthday questions and here are his answers:
JACK AT 6:
-favorite thing to do: play chess with grandpa
-what animal would you want to be? a dingo
-where would you like to visit? a beach
-what do you want to be when you grow up? paleontologist
-best friend: mom (to be fair I gave him some wiggly eyebrows on this question, which definitely swayed his answer haha)
-what would you buy with a million dollars? a huge huge huge huge dinosaur toy
-what are you most proud of? Alice learning to walk (cuuute)
-what do you like to do with your family? go to utah (we told him we'd be visiting Utah over spring break and his eyes lit up so bright)
JACK'S FAVORITES:
-book: his dinosaur encyclopedia
-animal: cheetah
-color: blue
-food: pizza
- snack: yogurt
-dessert: ice cream
-game: stratego
-sport: flag football
-drink: root beer
-song: "everything in its right place" by Radiohead (heavily swayed by Jared)
-movie: Cars
-fruit: watermelon
-hobby: making legos
And now some pictures from our week:
Little miss baby has bangs! They are very cute. Jared cut them last week--a little on the short side but (a) that's a rite of passage, and (b) they'll be the perfect length within a week or two. Alice wouldn't sit still so they're a bit uneven--oh well! I hesitated to let Jared do it, but he does SUCH a good job cutting his own hair and Jack's hair, and since he's willing and wanting to be the family haircutter, the best thing for him to do is practice. If we had family pictures coming up I'd take her to a professional but otherwise it's just so convenient (and cheap) to have Jared cut the kids' hair.
We had a sweet Valentine's date last week. On Jared's day off (Tuesday) we drove half an hour to the nearest Nordstrom to return some too-big boots I got for Christmas. Our plan was to have a Valentine's lunch date afterward, but Alice had run out of steam and started screaming by then. I knew a sit-down lunch would be a bad idea, but I also was bitter at the thought of skipping it and going home, so we pivoted and buckled Alice into the car, turned on a show for her to watch (she only recently developed the attention span for this to work and I am very happy about this milestone), went through a Shake Shack drive-thru by the mall, and had a car lunch date in the mall parking lot. It was really fun! We'd never had Shake Shack and it was good. The shake was great, the crinkle fries outstanding. The burgers weren't anything spectacular but the company was perfect. I didn't get any pictures, but here are some other pictures from our week:
Alice is back to two naps. We tried one nap for a month, but her nap was so short and wasn't getting longer and she was grumpy all the time. I referred back to an 18-month blog update I did for Jack (Alice is currently 16 months) and noted that he was still taking two naps at the time. So I tried putting Alice back on a two-nap schedule and it has made a world of difference around here. Both of her naps are longer than her one nap was before, and she's still going to bed and waking up at reasonable hours. "Sleep begets sleep" does it again.
Jared's mom invited me attend a cookie-decorating class with her on Saturday. It started at 7:00 p.m. and was an hour away. I was on a high feeling like a cRaZy college grl again until I took it too far and decided to stop for a Spicy McChicken at 11:00 p.m. on the drive home. I got stuck in what looked to be a medium-long drive-thru line that must've been full of potheads with huge cases of the munchies. Took 45 minutes to get through the line and I didn't get home until midnight. Worth it though (the class, not the McDonalds). This was my first time decorating with royal icing and it was lots of fun! Some pictures from our week:
I'm racking my brain for new going-ons to report. We started a new February tradition last week of eating dinner with all the lights off and a newly thrifted silver candelabra lit up. We're going to do this every night, letting the candles burn down, until Valentine's Day. It's still dark starting early in the evenings so this will be a fun tradition for the last month of darkness before we gain back some evening light with Daylight Savings in March. So fun how candlelight can completely shift the mood. Jack becomes very engaged in the dinner and conversation when we do this.
I got a new calling as first councilor in the stake primary presidency yesterday. I don't know much about what this will entail but I nervously look forward to finding out. Jared and I are sad we won't get to spend our second hour together teaching primary anymore, but he will probably get a new co-teacher and I'm sure I'll get to substitute in with him sometimes. He also continues to lead the activity days boys. It was fun to go to my first stake meeting yesterday morning and hear everyone sing praises of the Granite Falls activity days program. Hey! That's my Jared making that happen! He is the most dedicated, wonderful activity days leader. It's the perfect calling for him, honestly. The kids look up to him and he singlehandedly will plan out a year of activities at a time and singlehandedly execute almost all of them every week. What a guy. Here are some pictures from our week:
