Charlie's 5 year photos/Birthday Interview

This month my first-born turned 5 years old! This seems like a huge jump to me. He is thrilled to be 5! He is a leader and loves to learn, experiment, and create. Most everything he says starts with the phrase "I have an idea..." He picked the location for his 5 year old photos but I will have a blog post on that coming soon with the rest (yes, there are more) of our photos at this park. Charlie challenges me, teaches me, and makes me a better person.

He is social and outgoing and loves to make people laugh. He likes to play with everyone.

The only time Charlie is still is if he is watching a show or sleeping, otherwise he is a huge ball of energy

Charlie loves running, biking, building, inventing and laughing. 

 Charlie LOVES his preschool class so much. He would love to go everyday. all day. He loves his teachers. He may be one of the wiggliest, silliest kids in the class but his teachers love him too.

Charlie is excited about most things unless we are forcing him do something when he is already set on doing something else (bathroom breaks, getting dressed, cleaning up) He loves to be a helper and do "projects" He has become a lot more helpful in this last year.

He has started to become more interested in crafts and art projects this year. Previously, he has been more interested in more active activities. (which he still loves) and less interested in sitting down for a craft. He still gets bored writing his letters but he recognizes the sounds most letters make and picks them out of words.

 Charlie loves reading books with his parents and has gone through a handful of chapter books in the last year. These include, The "My Father's Dragon" series. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte's web, James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter 3-5 (miles got books 1-2 before they started sharing a room, Charlie wasn't as interested in Harry Potter at that time) a lot of the Harry Potter reading continues after the boys have fallen asleep but Max sure loves it.

Miles was mad I was making him balance on the fence

And to learn more about Charlie, Here is his birthday interview....

Name: Charlie

Nicknames: Charles

How old are you?  5

What is your favorite color? Gray

What is your favorite animal? "Macaroni and cheese..haha...actually that's my favorite food but actually my favorite animal is giraffes, baby giraffes. I really like baby giraffes, but not when I'm in my helmet cuz maybe they'll think I'm a dinosaur."

What is your favorite book? I'm a child of God...but we never got it at the store

What is your favorite TV show? Star Wars...but I never watched it with you before...but I watched it with Daddy.

What is your favorite movie? "I don't know, I don't remember! What is one I like? "Star wars?"Oh yeah, Star Wars!"

What is your favorite song? I am a Child of God

What is your favorite food? Macaroni and Cheese (also, Animal crackers)

What is your favorite drink? "Umm..Juice"

What is your favorite snack? meat from a tiger..I mean meat from a crab

What is your favorite treat? Lollipop

What is your favorite outfit?My bike shirt, I mean dinosaur shirt.

What are your favorite slippers? My dinosaur ones (Charlie demanded this question be here)

What is your favorite game?"You could make up a new game, I've never played it before but I know how to play it. I haven't made up a name yet. How about I name it name? So, to play, there are 4 people that can play and 4 helmets, so we'll all play, so to play, you take your helmet and put it on backwards, then you're done playing. And I already am playing the game, look!"

What is your favorite toy? "My favorite toy is the car that broke, even though I like it."

Who is your best friend? "Gwenevere and Grace"

What is your favorite thing to do? "Play at OMSI".

What is your favorite thing to do outside? "Tippy bike with my new helmet, actually I don't know yet, I think it will be fun so I'll do that, maybe it will be fun maybe it wont."

What is your favorite holiday? "Christmas, and Birthdays"

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? "Umm, stuffed animals that are giraffe."

Where is your favorite place to go? To Gwenevere and Grace's house.

What is your favorite restaurant? “Pizza Caboose"

Where do you want to go on vacation? Ummm... to a place where you can ride bikes I guess."

What do you want to be when you grow up? “a giraffe"

What do you love?"You! I love you more than the Children's museum! I love you more even though"

 

What did you do on your birthday? “Go to Pizza Caboose, did games at pizza caboose, and I also did, um I also did, mom I also did...Is this a Christmas card..."

What do you do really well? “Ummm...play games, I really want to do the treadmill."

What makes you laugh? “mmmm, science."

What are you afraid of? “Ummm...real monsters.”

What do you like to do with your family? “Kiss and Hug"

What do you love to learn about? “Science!"

What is your mom good at?  ”Are you good at games?"

What is your dad good at? “Ummm...games also!"

What is Miles good at? “Miles, I don't know what he's good at, he's good at everything, except reaching for tools"

Tell me a joke? “What do you call a giraffe? A mirror!, haha, how about another joke...Mom, do you want to hear a different joke, I'll tell you a different joke, so, what do you want to play with? Nothing. Is that weird? Is that funny?"
What is something you learned this year? "Ummm, Science, but I want to do science. I'll help you find the science, it's upstairs!"
What makes mommy laugh? science I guess, funny games!
What's a nice thing you have done for someone? Hugs and kisses for you, I mean my family."

Anyway, we just love our little big boy! and if you made it to the end of this post, chances are that you like him too! It is so fun to celebrate him and make him feel special on his birthday...(and the following week or two)Stay tuned for the rest of our park photos as well as Charlie's Pizza Caboose and OMSI birthday celebrations!

Car Accident

A few weeks ago we were involved in a car accident on the way to church. We were rear-ended while waiting for traffic to clear so we could turn left into our church parking lot. The weird thing about this is that I saw everything happen in slow motion. We've had friends rear-ended in this same location so I've always been extra cautious here. I slowed slowly with my turn signal on. and kept watching the car behind us while I stopped and noticed they were not slowing down. I had the brief thought that I should start accelerating forward to reduce the impact but there really wasn't time to do anything about it. Luckily the car noticed before they completely rammed into me and slammed on the breaks. I heard them skidding and by the time they hit me, there wasn't much of a jolt. It was just me and my little boys. They barely realized something had happened. Max was 2 cars behind us, (Yes he was behind the car at fault, and saw the whole thing happen.) He had tried to honk to warn the car to slow down but in the brief moment he couldn't find his horn in time and just saw a car speeding into his whole family. I was glad he was there though so we all pulled over. We were all a little shaken up. And then we realized the couple in the car that rear-ended us were our very good friends that were going to church as well. Before Max realized it was them he was worried about how he would react. It takes a lot to make Max mad, and apparently watching a careless driver ram into your family is one of those things. Once he saw it was our friends he just felt love for them and after checking to make sure the boys and I were okay, he made sure they were okay as well. We then checked the damage. Our car didn't seem too damaged and we were so grateful in that moment that we had a car that protected us.

I was surprised when I saw the damage on their car because it really didn't feel like they hit us that hard.


When we finally pulled into the church parking lot, Charlie was really concerned about the accident once he realized what happened. I told him we were blessed that everyone was safe and there were no injuries. He then asked if our friends' car was broken and when I told him, it was pretty damaged, he was so concerned and said "I didn't want anyone's car to get broken!" It made me feel good that he was concerned with others. We then just talked about how it is good that no people were injured. I also had felt our baby moving a lot shortly after the accident so that was reassuring. ( When I talked to my doctor later, I found out that they would have wanted to do some fetal monitoring immediately after the accident, so, remember that if this ever happens to you. I just didn't feel like a big enough impact for me to worry about it) Our friends admitted that the driver was changing the clock for daylight savings time and the turn snuck up on him. It was sad this had to happen but it was good that we knew we were dealing with honest and well-insured people. We had our car in the shop for a couple weeks and it was evaluated that there was $3000 worth of damage. We got to have a dreamy rental van that the boys did not want to give back.  It was a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica with all the bells and whistles. My boys were so sad to give it back this week. Charlie requested we take the automatic doors off the van and put them on our car. haha! Anyway, it was quite the learning experience and had the best possible outcome for us. Our friends have a parent that sells used cars and gets them cheap at auctions then fixes them up so they had access to getting another car pretty easily, so that was something positive for them as well. But now I may want a van!

Halloween: Part 2

On Halloween, we had a lot more to celebrate. Charlie got to wear his costume to preschool and then families got to join his class the last hour of preschool for a party. We got to see his class parade through the building then play games and break the pinata they had been building for the last week. It was a blast, and Miles liked being part of the big kids.  After we got home we had lunch and naps and got our costumes all ready for our evening of photos, and visiting grandparents and trick or treating. 

We had a quick early dinner then head downtown Portland to a spot my dad recommended that had great roof top views. It seemed to work great for our photos. And it was empty so the boys had a fun time running wild.

The big boys teaching the little one how to put a hand in the pocket....

The rest of our evening consisted of our traditional grandparent visits. It has been our way of taking our kids safely trick or treating and visit family at the same time. We went to Mum-Z's house first. Justin and Jordan had gone all out on the decorating and Mum-Z loved seeing the boys. We then went over to my Green Grandma's house and had a nice visit. Then we went to my Red Grandma's house where we decided to trick or treat a little bit on her street. We haven't ever really taken our kids door to door before but they were wanting to try it and my Grandma has a wonderful neighborhood for it. We made it to about 10 houses then went back to visit a little longer with my Grandma and Austin and Michelle. And that was our exciting Halloween! And we're already planning for next Halloween so I can actually be prepared!