Ian

Ian is 7! He was so excited to have a birthday, but the only thing I could get out of him as to why he was excited to be 7 was because he was excited to be in 2nd grade. Too bad he has another 6 months to wait for that! He brought moon shaped cookies to his class for his birthday.

He is really interested in outer space and planets, he wanted a Saturn cake.

Ian has wanted a watch since he was about 4, and he finally got one. We got an update of what time it was about every minute while we ate cake and ice cream :)

I don't think I've posted much about Ian's younger days, since I didn't have this blog then. So here are some pictures of his younger years - I also don't have many good baby pictures, since I didn't have a digital camera then. This is when he was one year old.

Two years with Daddy's hat on

Three years

Four years

Five years, first day of kindergarten!

His sixth birthday, #6 pancakes for dinner.

We are so glad to have Ian in our family, he is a wonderful big brother, is happy, and fun. He loves to read, he reads picture books and also chapter books. He loves school, loves to write, loves numbers. He's a great helper around the house and is able to do so much! He likes to play outside and be a spy or a detective, and use ropes and branches to build things. He likes to build with blocks and legos, but mostly when he's home from school he plays with his brothers, he loves his role as the oldest when he can tell his brothers what to play :)

January 2010

Better late than never, right? Here are some highlights from January.....

Ian keeping up during his Christmas vacation from school - it took me a while to figure out what he'd done while folding laundry - he wrote out "11 x 13 = 143" with the socks. Is it obvious that he got a calculator? :)


Still playing "Santa" for most of the month - or two santas, as the case may be, with two nice reindeer. It's amazing how fireman coats look a lot like santa coats, too! Santas with the nice pumpkin in the background - that also finally got cooked!

Caleb started reading the paper. He's very intent. The front page article? The building of a new store, and there was a huge picture of the excavators digging :)

The kitchen got painted! It's nice and bright green, we like it much better than the dark brown that it was.

It snowed enough on a Saturday to go sledding! It was a lot of fun.

Then, it was warm enough for yard work. John took out two trees in the front.

And the next morning, it looked like this again! It's crazy, either snowy or warm. It's better than the 7.5 feet of snow they got here last winter, for sure.

We had a wonderful visit with the grandparents who hadn't yet been to our house, it was fun showing them around and playing with them. Grandpa and John got in a basketball game for their alma mater, we went to the Discovery Center, and mostly just had fun with them.

One of Ian's Recipes

Ian likes to create recipes lately, I'm not sure why. Somehow we haven't tried any yet - broccoli cheese tomato soup, potato pie. Who knows, in a few years he may be creating new and wonderful recipes!

Olive Caseroll

1 can olives
1 can green beans
grade wite chese


2 tsp sugar
1 tsp flour
3 tsp cinumian
1/2 c sortnen
4 eggs
1/4 c milk


mix the ingedements, roll the doe place in circle pie pan. Add Olives and green beans, spread chese on top, place top doe on top. Set in oven 25 minuts, 435 degrees F.

December 2009

December was a fun month. Christmas is so fun for young children because it's so exciting to look forward to, so many fun things to do and play.

This is Daddy trying to get a Sunday afternoon nap :)


There is a museum here that has a Christmas party, where Santa rides down the hill on a horse. We went, it was a nice substitution for the NICU Christmas party we've gone to the past couple of years but can't go to any more. Anyway, after Santa came in on the horse he went inside to talk to children (which Ian finally did, the other two stood nearby), and they let children sit on the horse. Levi was the bravest, and that got Ian to realize it wasn't so bad - sitting on the horse turned out to be his favorite thing. Caleb never did get on the horse.

Ian's school had a music program that the first and second graders participated in. Ian was so excited about it, he sang the songs all the time, so much that his brothers learned them! When the day came he was excited that they could wear Santa hats. During the program, he only participated at the very last "Hey!" of "Jingle Bells," but he was up there with his class and did a great job.

All month they have pretended to be shepherds and wise men, and riding their camels and donkeys.

And firemen - they love to be firemen right now. Levi is a very warm fireman with his scarf.

They like to be construction workers, too. Caleb loves especially to bang with his hammer.

John, having fun on his vacation, being a jack-in-the-box with the tunnel from a play tent.

Their aunt and uncle and cousins gave them a play tent (that the tunnel fits onto) and they love it!

Ian and Daddy working hard on a model of the solar system. Ian is really interested in planets and space right now.

Gingerbread houses (out of graham crackers) - back left is Ian's tall house, then Caleb's in the back right. Front left is Daddy's stable, complete with Mary and Joseph inside. Middle is Grandma and Grandpa's, and then Levi's is the front right. They had fun with them.

Caleb giving Levi a haircut - "snipping" with his pliers.

December went by quickly, and ended with a visit from Grandma and Grandpa; we got several things worked on around our house plus lots of games played - candy land, checkers, mancala, hi-ho cherrio - they had a great time with their grandparents. I can't believe it's already 2010! Now it's time to get back to school and work and all the things that seem much more boring after a fun holiday month.

Halloween and November

Since the Christmas decorations are up, it's about time I put up pictures of Halloween! We went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood, meeting some new neighbors, and that was about all Caleb and Levi wanted to do. John took Ian to the mall after that, where they had trick or treating, and he saw some friends from school and thought that was fun. Caleb liked the candy, after I let him have some that night and said he couldn't have any more, he said, "but there's still three treats in my bucket!"

Caleb was Piglet and Levi was Winnie the Pooh. There are a lot of pictures here but I put on these first two because of how similar their expressions are! I guess they are identical :)

And here is Ian, the ghost. He decided he wanted to be a ghost long before Halloween and never changed his mind.

I put these next two on because I realized Caleb matched his bedroom wall......

and Levi matched the door! I didn't feel like looking through old pictures to find Ian matching our old yellow kitchen wall, but he did when he was a toddler :)

We also worked on cleaning out our yard. There are so many trees right by the house - one had ruined the shingles - and many bushes we want out, like the really thorny one that got Caleb one day and he couldn't move. Plus if we want a garden spot we need some out. Someday I will post pictures of before and after, but this is taking some of it to the recycling place. There is a leaf/outdoor trimmings recycling center, and we hauled many many bags of branches and leaves there, all in the van. I could get 5 tall paper leaf bags in there, trying not to poke Levi too badly.

This is what Ian did in November, even when his brothers were playing practically on his head!

He loves to read, and is reading fairly well. He likes The Magic Tree House books and The Magic School Bus books, especially if they're related to space or inside your body.

For some reason they like playing while laying down.....

And this is Ian coming in for the finish in his school's "Turkey Trot." They put everyone on teams (it was voluntary I believe, but the PE teacher signed up all the first graders) with one child per grade per team. The 6th grader on each team was the captain. Then they raced by grade, all the first graders, who are each on different teams, then the second graders, etc. It had snowed and then was melting, I'm surprised more kids didn't slip and fall. He said his team captain did (I only stayed for the first and second graders, Caleb and Levi weren't liking it). They raced around the school yard, a pretty good distance. I'm very proud of Ian for finishing, partway through he started to cry but he kept on running and finished! He was 53 out of what he said were 60 teams. Then the team captain added up the scores of all the team members, and the team with the lowest number won. Each member of the team got a turkey. Ian's team got 202, I don't know what the winning score was.

And finally, here are the cornucopias we made. Well, John didn't make one but the rest of us did. It was pretty fun, they are made with bread sticks and they all did really well with it! Then we made salt dough fruits and vegetables, then painted them. We had a quiet Thanksgiving, with an abbreviated Thanksgiving menu since it was just us and not much food is consumed by the majority of the family members. It was a relaxing and nice holiday.