Jacob's Birthday

Well it happened.   My baby has turned five and leaves me everyday to go to Kindergarten.  On August 20th Jacob turned five years old.    He is such a fun kid, full of life and energy.  He is such a blessing to our family.  He has everyone wrapped around his little finger!  He worked hard this past year and is reading quite well now.  It was a real challenge for us at first, but once he decided he liked his "reading lessons" he really took off with it.  He is enjoying Kindergarten and likes to play with his friend Jeffery at recess.

He loves all things Scooby-Doo.  He has watched every Scooby-Doo DVD at two different libraries multiple times.  His favorite shirt is Scooby-Doo and his favorite books are Scooby-Doo.

He loves running, jumping playing, and getting his way.  He will still snuggle with us sometimes and he still makes us all laugh.  He thinks of his siblings as his best friends.  Now that Adam is out of the boys room, he and Ben have gotten to be good buddies.  He loves to play "Kick the Can" when it is his turn to pick the activity for Family Home Evening.  He is happy and good natured, but also quite opinionated and stubborn.  I guess those things help balance each other out.  He has a very limited diet, eating Nutella sandwiches with cheese (gross, huh?) usually twice a day.  He has follwed Lizzy's lead and doesn't eat meat (sometimes he will bend this rule for a hot dog).  Thankfully he does eat fruit and salad, too.  We love Jacob and are so happy to have him in our family.

This is Jacob when he is happy and enjoying life.


This is the other flavor of Jacob.  He makes life interesting.  We never know which Jacob we will get :)

Lizzy presenting her gift of Scooby fruit snacks to Jacob (a real treat at our house).  Lizzy is still somewhat of a little mom to Jacob.  Sometimes I will leave Adam or Anna to babysit, but when Jacob is having a hard time, it is Lizzy who knows just what to do and how to help Jacob.  She has always known what to do to help him.

Jacob wanted a cookie cake.  This is the recipe the kids like best.

I know this is not the highest quality photograph, but I love this picture.  I love that he still likes to snuggle his mom.


Adam and Jacob have a very playful relationship.  Even though Jacob is so much smaller they are wrestling buddies and Adam knows how to motivate Jacob with competition.  He gave Jacob several packs of gum.

 

Ben gifted Jacob the favorite gift of the evening.  It was one of those punching balloons but it was in the shape of an animal.  Ben is amazing at teaching Jacob.  He sets up all sorts of reward systems to help Jacob with his behavior.  He helps him with chores in fun ways and even has taught him things like how to pour his own drinks.  Ben puts up with a lot from Jacob and continues to amaze us with his longsuffering and kindness  towards Jacob.  They also have a lot of fun together, though.  As the older ones are gone more and more they still have each other.

Anna is the activity director of the four younger children, Jacob included.  She always has a fun idea or game for them all to play together.  She can get everyone excited about something no one else has ever thought of before, and Jacob loves it.  He is at a great age for pretend play and I never get tired of hearing what they are up to that particular day.  Here is Anna presenting her gift to Jacob.

Ben and Greg made a treasure hunt for Jacob because that is what Jacob wanted.  He had a great time reading and searching for clues.  The cake was his treasure. 

I love the part each of our children play in our family. I love the unique relationships they have with each other.  I feel like they are helping so much in the raising of each other.  I am so proud of all of them.  I love birthdays because we get a chance to spotlight the place "one" has in our family.  Jacob we love you.  We love the sunshine and fun you bring to our family.  You are a blessing to us all.

First Day of School Pics

I am still playing catch up.  Here are the kids on their first day of school.

Jacob (my baby)--Kindergarten


Ben--2nd Grade

Lizzy--4th Grade

Anna--6th grade (which is starting middle school)

Adam--8th Grade

Everyone is doing well and we are in the routine. The first couple of weeks were a little rough, but everyone is doing great now.  Anna and Jacob had the hardest time.  I have had a hard time too having Jacob gone all day.  Some days I don't know what to do with myself.  I am getting used to it more now, but I am so thankful I have five beautiful children and that I am able to be a stay-at-home mom.  

The rest of the summer

I think the vacation posts wore me out.  Here is a quick run down of a few of the other things we did in the summer.

The kids always have fun taking pictures with the i-pad.  They also made several videos this summer.  I thought this pic of Anna was cool.


Our little ham, Lizzy, had fun gathering all of the medical paraphernalia and having a little fun.

Jacob wasn't about to get left out of a photo op.  Yeah he doesn't have a back brace or a neck brace, but he has a mohawk!

We try to go on regular dates with the kids.  Thanks to a talk in sacrament meeting a few years ago we discovered a great system.  Each kid gets two months of the year for date months.  In those months they get one date with Greg and one date with me, one on one.  They are awesome and something the kids always look forward to.  Since I won't/don't eat most of the junk food kids love, Greg always gets to go somewhere to eat.  Here is Anna with her giant cheesecake at Cheescake Factory.

 

 Greg has been super busy lately.  He started that certificate program at MIT (can continue for a Master's if he chooses) so he has been to Boston a few times.  He also got to go to San Diego for a Conference.  This was great for him because he served his mission there.  Here a few pics from the trip.  The temple, the view from his hotel and a cool guy stacking rocks at the beach. 

 

 

Here is crazy Lizzy again.  She is so fun and random!

My first trifle.  I made it for a Relief Society activity but then didn't eat any.  I hope it turned out OK.

 I bought some art books for Anna and some nice pencils.  Anna really enjoyed having more time to create and draw this summer.  One Sunday she had an "Art Show" for us all.  She even charged to buy her paintings.  She graciously gave us the correct (fake) currency to pay her.  Here is the artist and some of her work.  It is so fun to see your kids develop their talents. 

 

 

Here is Anna and I after our date together.  We went to get haircuts and go school shopping.  She is really growing up.
 

The week Adam was at scout camp we had a Hawaiian week.  We checked out books about Hawaii and each child had to report on a certain topic concerning Hawaii.  We had a lot of fun.  Anna really enjoyed teaching us all some Hawaiian words.  We also tried some Hawaiian food.  My kids have never had guava or papaya.  They also wanted to try a real coconut.  Mixed reviews.

I love Anna's face and Lizzy's tentative licking.

 

These are Anna's very creative homemade paper decorations.  She also made a few "surfboards".  She is so creative!
 

I really had a hard time getting the coconut open.  One of the kids almost threw up when they tried the coconut milk (it was gross, almost like drinking coconut oil straight or something) and we didn't really like the flesh plain either.  

 

We also went to the library a lot.  We attended a few presentations there.  These pictures are from the bat presentation.  I am not sure why, but my girls really like bats. The bat lady let every child get a picture with the bat if you wanted to.  It was really cool.  You will notice Adam is not in many of the pictures.  He did spend some time with us this summer, but he spent as much time as possible with his friends.  They would often spend hours at the YMCA playing basketball or handball.  He had two really great church friends each about a block or two away.  We were all sad when one of them moved at the end of the summer.  Sadly, Adam is growing out of some of the kids activities we do.  He kindly humors me and tags along sometimes, though.  I hope you all had a great summer.  Now, enjoy your fall!

Vacation: The End

This is the last vacation post!  Yeah!  Believe me, I am just as glad as you, my three readers.   Here are some good bye pics to our rental home.

One of the only pics we took inside our rental home.  Here is Jacob during Family Home Evening at the Rental Home.

A lousy picture, but again one that shows some of the rental house.  Don't ask me what I am doing.  Paying close attention to Family Home Evening, obviously :)

We made a few stops on our way home.  Our first stop was at what is formerly known as Harmony, PA.  right on the Susquehannah River.  The church has a small monument there commemorating the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood.  Joseph Smith and his friend (and scribe) Oliver Cowdery were translating the Book of Mormon.  They had a question about baptism and the authority to baptize.  They went into the woods to prayer and were blessed with a heavenly visitor, John the Baptist.  John bestowed upon them the Aaronic, or lesser priesthood, which includes the authority to baptize.  Then Joseph and Oliver baptized each other. 

The sight of the monument is on a busy road, but as you go back into the woods and down by the river, it is quite peaceful.  We enjoyed the quiet feeling there and enjoyed a short lesson about the event from Greg.  We are glad to know that the church is going to build a visitor's center there.  We are glad we took the time to drive a little out of our way to go there.  (Just in case you are counting, we visited our second cemetary here.  Joseph and Emma Smith lost their first child here.  We visited his grave in the cemetary next to the monument).

Jacob climbing an amazing tree near the monument

Smiling kids in the tree

Silly kids in the tree

On the path to the river

The Susquehanna River

Shells we found at the Susquehanna River

Now, what kind of parents would we be if we were in Pennsylvania and didn't stop at Hershey?!  We spent a morning at Hershey's Chocolate World.  We made our own Candy Bars and learned how they make theirs.  It was a lot of fun!  It would be fun to go back and do some of the other attractions or go to the amusement park next door.

Jacob watching for his candy bar to come down the line

In our factory gear

We also got to make our own labels.  Here is the final product.

 Our last stop was the middle of nowhere, Indiana.  Greg has some ancestors that lived here and were buried here.  He has wanted to see their graves for a long time.  It was sort of on our way so we took the detour.  Graveyard number 3, check.  It was about this time we realized how nice the weather had been in Massachusetts.  We were now back in the  heat of this terribly hot summer the Midwest has had.

Greg happy to have found the graves of his great, great, great, great grandparents, Thomas Hamilton Finch and Elitha Holloman Finch.

The kids (minus Jacob) at the grave of their great, great, great, great, great grandparents.

I asked the family what their favorite part of vacation was.  Here is what they said:
Lizzy:  Whale Watching because I liked the ocean and it was cool to see real whales in the ocean.
Anna:  Whale Watching because I loved the boat ride and the wind in my hair.  It was so fun!  I loved seeing the whales and it just reminded me how great the creations are on the earth.
Ben:  Hershey's Chocolate World because I really liked the tour and seeing all the chocolates in the machine.  It was cool to make our own and see how cool the machine was, especially the laser that wrote our names on our boxes.
Adam: Swimming at our lake and hanging out at our rental home because I liked having our own private beach.
Jacob:  Swimming at our lake because it was cold water.
Tammy:  Spending time with our family.  It is so great to get away from our normal routine and have fun together. (Of the things we did, I loved Whale Watching!  Amazing!)
Papa:  Whale Watching because I enjoyed the boat ride and the breeze on the ocean.
THE END!!!!