Birthday Boys

:: Warning :: Excessive bragging ahead ::


This is always a busy week at our house. We have 2 birthdays to celebrate. First is Parker's.
I can't believe he turned 7 this year! How did my baby boy get so grown up? I have to say that I absolutely love this age. Parker is the greatest kid. He's always willing to help with whatever you ask, does his homework before you can even check to see if he even has any, and he is so smart! He's one of the top readers in his class and is breezing through the math they are learning. He is always coming home to tell me something they started learning at school and wants to know why everyone doesn't already know it. It seems most the stuff they go over he's already figured out on his own. Right now we're trying to decide if we should move him to a different school, like a charter school, so that he can be challenged a little bit more. But in the meantime he is loving feeling like he's at the top. He likes to tell me all the time that he's the smartest kid in his class, I'm sure there are a lot of others just as smart, but I'm glad he thinks highly of himself :)
One of the best things about Parker is that he is so thoughtful and sensitive. He's not sensitive in the way that he gets offended easily or cried a lot, but if I'm having a hard day he can pick up on it and will do little random secret things all day to help. I've found my bed made several times with a little paper heart on top. He even changed the laundry load for me once, including folding the clothes from the dryer and putting them all away! And I didn't even know he was doing it until I came upstairs to and he was just waiting for me to help put in the soap for the new load and turn everything on. What 7 year old kid does that?! So he's awesome and I wouldn't trade him for any other kid in the whole world.

Parker and KC have chore charts they have to do everyday and Parker's figured out that the "reward" for doing all their jobs is not really that great and negotiated himself a better deal. They each ahve about 8-12 jobs a day, some are really simple like brushing teeth and getting dressed, those are mostly to help KC remember what he needs to do. But some are harder like doing dishes, taking out the trash, and cleaning bathrooms. It is so nice to have kid getting big enough to really help! So anyway they get a sticker for every job they do adn when tehy get 100, which takes a few weeks, they can pick out a toy at the dollar store. Well since those toys usually break within the first hour they have them Parker wanted to know if he could just have the dollar instead so he can save it for a better toy. So he's building up a nice little stash of money and likes to count it everyday to see how much closer he is. He has a picture up on his bedroom wall of the toy he wants, a fancy Star Wars lego ship.

Our other birthday boy is Aaron. He took the day off work today so he could go to the family history library and do some scanning and research. Sometimes I think family history is a weird hobby for someone his age, but he sure loves it, and it could be worse right? He could be glued to the computer or video games all day. And it's fun to see how excited he gets when he connects with someone new to share info or comes across just the thing he's been searching for.

I'm glad he's out enjoying himself today, he's had so much going on at work lately, then some health issues - brought on by all the recent stress I'm sure, and a pretty pathetic pregnant wife who spends most the day sitting around and sleeping while the house just gets messier and messier. So he's spending a lot of time taking care of everyone else and doesn't get a lot of free time.

Aaron was born 13 weeks premature. He wasn't supposed to be born until April. Can you imagine having a baby at only 27 weeks? It's scary to think about now let alone 31 years ago when they didn't have nearly as much of the medical technology that we have today. Aaron really was a miracle baby to have survived, and I'm so glad that he did. I don't know what we would do without him. He's my very best friend and such a wonderful husband and father. These sweet boys of our absolutely adore him. And so do I. He works so hard to do what he believes is right and to make us all happy.

Happy Birthday to 2 of my favorite boys. I can't imagine life without you. Thanks for all that you do and for being you!