Zeke's 4th Birthday Party

I asked Zeke what kind of birthday party he wanted, and his answer was to have cake at Grandma's house, like we did last year. So we did!

Smart kid went after the presents as soon as we got there.

Opening Misty Island Rescue from mom and dad.

I think every present had something to do with Thomas. Or Cars. Or both. Two of Zeke's favorite things!

We borrowed a Thomas DVD from the library in January that has a secondary story about one of the engineers making a Thomas cake for a birthday party, and Zeke has been wanting to have a Thomas cake ever since. Knowing that trying to make a 3D Thomas could only end in disaster, we started looking for other fun options. When we found these train and airplane candle holders, Zeke was a big fan. Aaron did the decorating by painting the frosted cake with food coloring and a paintbrush.

Nine Month Nora

Celebrating Nora with a few fun pictures that weren't already posted in the past couple of months.

She plays while she eats. The purple slinky was her favorite thing while most of the toys were already packed.

This is a pretty typical view of Nora.

Look how proud she is that she dumped her dry oatmeal out onto the table so she could play with her pretty green bowl. So cute even when she's making a mess!

It's all about the white chocolate, at least to play with. Daddy is so proud.

Other cool things about Nora are she is starting to cruise, her balance is getting better toward standing alone, she loves to climb stairs, and she insists on feeding herself. Love this little girl!

About Zeke

After many posts about Nora and her growing and changing, I thought it was time for a post about Zeke. He's growing and changing too, just not in such photographic ways. He really wants to do everything himself and gets quite upset if you do it for him. He is learning things like putting on his own seatbelt, pouring the milk on his cereal, and being careful while handling DVDs. There really isn't much space now that he can't reach, so putting things up high is limited.

He can make Nora laugh more than for anyone else. She just thinks he is funny and he is so silly sometimes just to get her going. Zeke is still such a brother and thinks it's funny to get in her way or get right on top of her.

He loves to be outside. Loves it. Puddles, rocks, dirt, sand, rain, sun, wind, leaves... he loves it all.

Zeke is always in motion. Take him anywhere that there is space (outside, a bigger house, the grocery store) and he will be running and exploring the whole time.

One fun thing that has developed recently is a desire to help me bake. I've been trying to get him to help me off and on for most of his life and he's never cared. But now he loves to get right up next to me and help me measure ingredients and dump them into the mixer. He doesn't like cooking dinner as much as making cake or cookies, although we have had a couple of incidents where I left dinner partially made to go take care of Nora and he came along to 'help'. Like dumping a whole bottle of seasoned salt into the buttered noodles.

If I were to describe Zeke in one word it would be passionate. He puts his whole self into everything he does. From playing with his Cars or trains to drawing pictures to playing outside to watching his favorite movies to expressing his displeasure or frustration. This means that if he cares about something, he will learn it fast, repeat it often, and get very frustrated when it doesn't go how he wants. If he doesn't want something, it's quite a task to talk him into it!

He's growing up so fast and I'm so proud of him, even though he wears me out!

Time to Move On

There's something about packing box after box after box - with the knowledge that I will be unpacking them later - that really takes some of the excitement out of moving. But it was worth it. Totally and completely worth the $40 for the perfect moving boxes, the 51.5 hours of paid time off it took me to get us completely out of our old place and the basics set up in our new home, several late nights, sore backs, dry skin from handling boxes all day, taking the long way home from work to move more stuff, and spending a lot more than usual in the Auto:Fuel category of our budget.

We have been wanting to move for several months and seriously trying to figure out the details for the last couple of months. We talked about and looked into several different options in several locations, all of which felt right at the beginning but then didn't work out. Then everything fell into place and we love knowing we are where we need to be.

Here are our cute kids in the midst of the move. Pictures of our new place to come after we get out from under these stacks of boxes that are slowly disappearing.