Chase's Pink Ride

The other day, Chase kept stealing Claire's bike.  Claire was so distraught over it... crying wailing, "Chase won't give me back my biiiiiiiiiiiiiiike."  Of course, during his joy rides on Claire's bike, Chase thought that it was hilarious UNTIL Aaron pulled out his phone to take a picture.  Chase tried to get away, but was no match for his quick fingered Dad!

And all Chase could say while laughing was, "Don't put it on Facebook."

HAHA!!  This'll teach him to steal a pink bike ;)

Turtle Art by Chase

For the past several months, Chase has been studying sea turtles at school.  What's great about where he goes to school is that what they're learning in the classroom carries over into other parts of their education such as using their technology classes and art classes to explore different ways to learn about turtles.  Today, Chase brought home his turtle artwork that he's been telling me about for weeks....

It's crayon that's been painted over with black and then etched.  I think it's beautiful :)

(Click on the picture to see it enlarged)

A Note to the Tooth Fairy

On April 14, while pushing her friend on the swings at school, Claire lost her very first baby tooth.  She was so excited, except that she didn't want the tooth fairy to take her tooth.... SO... she wrote her a note :)

"Tooth fairy please can I keep my baby tooth!"

Words of Henri: The Table

Getting some cleaning done this morning... yes, I know...fun fun!

Henri and I were folding laundry--OK... really he was laying on my bed talking to me-- and I told him,

"When we finish with this, I need to go pick up the table."

His response: "How you gonna do that?"

Nice... my 3 year old is making jokes from my words.

Chase is 8!!

8 years ago today, I held my not yet one day old baby boy.

It's amazing to me how quickly time has flown by since he was born... but what is even more amazing to me... is that it seems like it was just yesterday.  BUT... it's not.

Yesterday, Chase celebrated his 8th birthday.  Ahhh... the 8th birthday... I'd been referring to this year for Chase as the "Countdown Year."  Months before his birthday, he'd ask, "How many days til my birthday?"  Then as the day grew closer his excitement couldn't be contained.  Anytime someone asked him how old he was... he would immediately start talking about his birthday and how he was almost..."well pretty much"... 8.

So yesterday... was the day Chase had been counting down for.  It was a really great day...  he took some cookies to share with his class and he said they even sang "Happy Birthday" to him.  If anyone knows Chase... they know that he absolutely positively does NOT like being sang to... years past he's covered his ears or hid...but this year he said that it made him feel kind of special :)  YAY!!  I picked the kids up early from school so that we could all eat lunch together... have cake and open presents.  (This is the first year since Chase started school that his birthday wasn't on Spring Break.)  We had our lunch... opened presents, sang "Happy Birthday" and plunged our forks into a special birthday request Chocolate Ganache Cake with Mint Newman O's.

We spent a few hours playing with all of Chase's gifts, then made our way to dance-- for Claire and me ;)  After dance, we met Aaron at Hiro (Japanese Steakhouse) for dinner.  Chase loves it for many reasons including (but not limited to ;) ) soup, the onion volcano, lo mein (hmmm... maybe it's called something different at a Japanese restaurant?), and rainbow sherbert.  Once again... "Happy Birthday" was sang (a candle in the sherbert) AND once again Chase didn't cover his ears!!  Dinner was loads of fun... getting squirt in the face with water by the Hibachi chef, jumping as food caught on fire... and celebrating 8 years of Chase :)

Check out this pic from 2005...

YES!  That's Chase (3) blowing out his candles!