Connor: Eight Years!

At this point I should probably just combine Connor's eight and nine year posts since he'll be turning nine in less than a week, but I'm nothing if not stubborn and none of William's or Garrett's posts got combined so here we are. 

Age: 8

Height: 4 feet, 2 inches. Still tracking taller than William and Garrett at this age!

Weight: 60 pounds, 3.2 ounces. This kid is solid. And (somewhat unfortunately) he is one hundred percent still a kid, which means he still wants plenty of "uppies" and "piggy backs" and lap cuddles, which takes decidedly more effort than it did for his brothers at this age (heck, Garrett didn't hit sixty pounds until closer to ten and William was probably 9.5 when he hit sixty pounds). 

Favorite Color: Blue

Favorite Animal: Great White Shark

Favorite Book: Books about rocks

If you look closely, you'll see that he is holding his "gems" that he found on our hike. I'm pretty sure we couldn't walk outside anywhere without him finding rocks that were treasures

Favorite Song: Frozen Heart (from Frozen)

Favorite Sport: Soccer

Favorite Thing to do with Mom: Play Five Crowns

We're probably playing "War" here, not Five Crowns, but card games have been big lately

Favorite Thing to do with Dad: Be silly

Although for what it's worth, it's not exactly like he needs Dad to be silly. He's plenty silly on his own

Favorite Thing to do Outside: Play football

Favorite Place to go: Skyzone

Favorite Fruit: Raspberries

Favorite Vegetable: Tomatoes

Favorite Cereal: Cocoa Dino Bites

Favorite Treat: Hershey's Chocolate

Favorite Meal: Italian Spaghetti

What makes you happy: Playing with everybody

What makes you sad: Falling off my bike going full speed

Who are your best friends: Deegan, Wyatt, Garrett

What do you want to be when you grow up: A geologist

There weren't very many rocks to be found at this rest area in North Carolina, but he still found plenty of treasures to collect and sort and ask Mom and Dad to identify for him

What was your favorite part about last year: Playing baseball on a real diamond

What is one thing you want to do this year: Have a good school year

The school year got off to a great start with him crushing his math facts goals!

Considering this is almost a full year behind schedule, I don't have a ton of specifics to mention. This kid rocked first grade and is definitely starting to grow into his own personality and preferences (like the rock thing that kind of came out of nowhere!). He's still struggling with things being "fair" and tends to react first and process second, but we're working on it. It doesn't help that he's basically the same size as Garrett, so I sometimes find myself responding to him and his behaviors like I would Garrett, who--at 2.5 years older--is much better able to process and work through things quickly, whereas Connor definitely needs more time and patience than I sometimes give him. So it's a learning stage for both of us!

Lots of fun activities and quite a few firsts leading up to his 8th birthday--we're so blessed to get to watch this kid do life!

Trains are usually William's thing, but Connor was not about to turn down a chance to drive on at a model train show at our local library (which--for the record--isn't necessarily a common occurrence, but all the train guys know William so they were will to trust his younger brother as well) 

Sledding fun!

He may complain about things not being "fair" with his brothers, but he's also one hundred percent willing to step out and do things they won't. First kid of ours to want his face painted at the circus and to want to hold the snake

He got to join Granddad, Daddy, and Garrett on the pier one morning at the beach for fishing and LOVED it

I feel like monkey bars have come up with him before, but seriously--he rates playgrounds we go to by how good their monkey bars are

Not only did he get to join his brothers at Grandparent Camp in North Carolina this summer, but they also to go fly as unaccompanied minors for the first time! They got quite the special treatment (and loved every minute of it), and the stewardess was sweet enough to snag this picture of the boys in the cockpit and send it to us

Connor's favorite lake activity

4th of July fun!

Love that he still loves Mommy snuggles

I don't think you can see his Lambie in this picture, but we are still super attached to that--and to having lots of other stuffies in our bed. Although apparently sometimes we don't actually snuggle with the stuff in our bed

Second year running with a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake--I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it. We love you sweet boy!

Garrett: Ten Years!

 Unlike Matthew's post, this one has been sitting in my draft folder with very little content in it. So I'll do my best to piece a few things into it between pictures and his birthday interview, but I'm also just reminding myself that done is better than perfect. Definitely not how I want to close the book on his birthday updates, but life happens and here we are. And I'd rather close the book with an imperfect tenth birthday update than no update at all. 

What is your favorite color? Blue

What is your favorite animal? Cheetah

What is your favorite book? I Survived

What is your favorite song? Firework

What is your favorite sport? Soccer

I know I said it last year, but man Garrett has really taken to soccer. It's so fun to watch him play 

What is your favorite thing to do with Mom? Go yarn shopping

Garrett now crochets, and while his pile of started projects is significantly larger than his pile of completed projects, every once in a while he actually manages to finish something

What is your favorite thing to do with Dad? Play football

What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play on the snow hills

Where is your favorite place to go? The beach

I'm not sure if he has more fun fishing or swimming at the beach, but it's always a week with no shortage of smiles

What is your favorite fruit? Grapes

What is your favorite vegetable? Cauliflower

What is your favorite cereal? Cookie Crisp

What is your favorite treat? Milk Duds

What is your favorite meal? Balsamic Zucchini Ravioli

What makes you happy? Crocheting

What makes you sad? When people are mean to me

Who are your best friends? Pravash, Adric, Jamesia, JC, Merry

He and Adric goofing around during an indoor recess

What do you want to be when you grow up? Carpenter

What was your favorite part about last year? Fishing at the beach

What is one thing you want to do this year? Go to Pierre (spoiler since I'm posting this so late--Pierre didn't happen, but he still got to go walleye fishing for his 10th birthday trip with my parents, which was going to be the whole reason for going to Pierre, and since he still ended up catching lots of walleye he was perfectly happy with the change of plans)

A photo from the trip this past August, which I know technically shouldn't be on this post because if I had actually made this post in a timely manner I wouldn't have had this picture yet, but I can't not include it. Not just because of the fish, but also, look at that hair. He started growing it out shortly after his 10th birthday and it's just glorious. We've had to trim it a few times to keep it tidy (and not mullet-like) but otherwise he's all in on the flowing locks (and he's got the head flick to get the hair out of his eyes pretty well mastered)

I know I'll forget lots of details and miss lots of important things about Garrett at this age, but I will say that I've enjoyed the stroll down memory lane to pull the photos for this post. And let's be honest, no matter when I typed this or how much time I poured into making it perfect, I could still never capture all the details and nuances that make Garrett Garrett in a blog post. These posts are just the tip of the iceberg, and I'm so blessed that I get to experience Garrett in all his depths of character and personality!

Always an adventure out hiking with this crew, and Garrett has started getting big on wanting solo pictures with Mom and Dad, as well as carrying a plastic bag so he can pick up litter (which, sadly, we always find way more of than I expect)

Garrett loves growing stuff, and he has taken over planting stuff in our deck boxes (which honestly I never even bothered with) and he even grew a cantaloupe this year (which was delicious and he saved the seeds so he could grow more next year!)

Still going strong with piano lessons, and we've added another violinist to the house

Garrett the reporter at the Sunday School Christmas Program. He was super nervous about "acting" in front of an audience but did a great job!

Tried waterskiing again this summer (with new water skis) and it went so much better!

Garrett and a classmate wrote Christmas letter books to help kindergarteners work on their letter sounds and they even got to use them to do a little lesson with some kindergarteners 

I swear this isn't child labor--he genuinely LOVES mowing

Garrett tried lacrosse at a summer camp, and like most things he picked it up pretty easily and said he wanted to play it more, but unfortunately there just aren't a lot of lacrosse opportunities around here

The first few times we went to the skating rink Garrett opted for roller skates and while he did fine with them, it was a game changer for him to get roller blades. He was zipping around the rink

He was a little nervous about the heights at first, but once he fell a few times and learned his harness would catch him, he LOVED playing around on these aerial activities.

I can't think of a better cake for this sweet boy than a fish cake. He's followed William's footsteps in a lot of things, but it has been so fun to watch him really start exploring some interests that are just his (like fishing, crocheting, and gardening). He's a maker and a builder and always full of great ideas, and while Mom and Dad sometimes wish he would close the loop on his ideas a little more often, it's always fun to see where his ideas are taking him next

Matthew: Five Years!

Done is better than perfect. Is this the five year post I wanted to put up for Matthew? No. I still want to tweak it/improve it/better capture Matthew at this age. But is it time for this post to be done sitting in my draft folder? One hundred percent. Especially since all of these pictures are circa 2024 and I even confused myself reading through the information I had typed since it dates back almost two years, not this past year. And since the pictures/information are only getting more irrelevant (especially since he's already almost six!), on the interwebs they go. Finally.

Age: 5

Height: 3 ft 6 in

Weight: 38lb, 6.5oz

What is your favorite color? Blue

What is your favorite animal? Cheetah or Tiger

What is your favorite book? My Lucky Day

What is your favorite song? Go Tell it on the Mountain

What is your favorite sport? Soccer and Football

What is your favorite thing to do with Mom? Color

What is your favorite thing to do with Dad? Get tickled

What is your favorite thing to do outside? Soccer

Where is your favorite place to go? Lucy's gym

Lucy's gym has rings, and once he got the hang of them there was no looking back

What is your favorite fruit? Apple

What is your favorite vegetable? Carrot and Sweet Potato

What is your favorite cereal? Marshmallow Treasures

What is your favorite treat? Smarties

What is your favorite meal? Spaghetti and Italian Spaghetti

What makes you happy? Doing my marble track and stickers

What makes you sad? When someone hits me

Who are your best friends? Lucy and Rose and all the Griggs family

What do you want to be when you grow up? Artist

What was your favorite part of last year? Playing games on the couch downstairs

What is one thing you want to do this year? Play with my remote control car

At four, the heights of all the boys were within an inch of one another. By five, Connor had started to shoot up and break away from the pack. As of right now, it appears Matthew is going to follow Connor's track and establish himself as one of the "taller" brothers; he is dead even with Connor at five, which is an inch and a half taller than William or Garrett were. 

In another instance of William and Garrett vs Connor and Matthew, both of the older two were full-on reading by five, but Connor--and now Matthew--were not. Matthew is slowly starting to show interest in letters and sounds and figuring out how they go together (and he can write his name and the majority of the alphabet pretty easily), and he can recognize where the words are on a page, but that's about it for him. I have noticed that he still has a tendency to go right to left when we are talking about beginning sounds in words (or when he is reading numbers: 14 becomes 41), so that's definitely something we'll be keeping an eye on as he starts kindergarten. However, also like Connor at five, his math skills are unreal. He can do +1 and -1 of just about any number (probably up to thirty or so), and he can do sums/differences of four or more up to about 20. He is really good at dividing (although with him we just talk about it as "splitting things equally"), and can often figure it out in his head how many muffins each of them should get if we have 12 to split. Even when we play Chutes and Ladders I've noticed that he doesn't always "count" his spaces; he'll just pick up his piece and move it to the next spot (with probably about ninety percent accuracy). 

He continues to play independently really well, and has (finally!) started to get into puzzles (and after like a week of doing the 24 piece wooden puzzles he decided to jump straight to the 100 piece puzzles, so rationally I know it's time to get rid of our "baby" puzzles, but I just can't bring myself to pull the trigger on that yet!). He'll still take naps during the week pretty consistently (mostly because I'm not ready to lose my alone time in the afternoon!), but usually skips them on the weekend and is just fine. Darrell keeps reminding me that we need to get him used to not taking naps before kindergarten, but that's what summer break is for, right? 

Speaking of summer, we tried multiple times over the summer to get him to practice riding his pedal bike (as opposed to his Strider bike that doesn't have pedals). He'd either flat out refuse to pull it out, or get on it, pedal it once or twice, and declare it "too hard". Then randomly in the beginning of September he asked to get out his pedal bike, and later that evening he was zipping up and down the block by himself. This is his personality in a nutshell: when he's in the mood to do something there is no stopping him (literally--when he is in a mood to play games, you'd better carve out your entire morning for endless rounds of UNO, Chutes and Ladders, Guess Who, etc), but there is absolutely zero forcing him to do something he doesn't want to do. 

A few other random Matthew memories: he loves (LOVES) hide and seek and fully grasps the whole being quiet and hiding thing. Sometimes to a fault because we don't always realize he's playing and there have definitely been a few moments of panic when he hasn't answered us when we've called for him. He calls his big toe his "thumb toe", which I love, and after ten weeks in the spring of doing daycare for my niece (who is Matthew's age), he FINALLY started picking up on when to use he vs she. Poor Lucy didn't care for being referred to as a "he" or "him" but she tolerated it well.

First time roller skating!

Mom's little hiking buddy

See rocks, will climb. Always

Not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous that I never thought to create a canopy/fort on the bottom bunk when my sister and I shared a bunk bed

First summer as a Little Vikes camper at Leif Ericson Day Camp!

He loves Lucy's gym so much it was his request for his birthday outing this year!