Thursday, March 27

Four years with Bateman Andrew!

Bateman Andrew!  What a treasure!  What can I say about you?  The first thing that comes to mind is how relational you are.  You are such a great friend.  You're always interested in what others are doing and love to get involved in it.  You are fearless.  And that bright smile is so warm!  You always seem to know exactly what you want and how you want it.  I love how on the morning of your birthday celebration at your preschool you knew you wanted to wear your pink button-down shirt and your "Sully pants" (from Monsters Inc.).  You looked so sharp!

Preschool celebration



Birthday morning!  This time your vest was necessary for the ocassion.  And gel in your hair.  Oh, I love you!  I think this 4th birthday was the first birthday you really anticipated celebrating for weeks.  We found a great little studio that had a drama and dance class available for a birthday celebration.  I chose the dinosaur theme out of a list of themes.  You didn't know much about dinos beforehand, but we did our best to learn and get all excited about them!!  :)







Thanking your brother for the "Little Blue Truck" sequel book.  Brotherly love!




Getting ready to ride over to the birthday party!


Dino Shake!



Here you're an archaeologist!
You found a dino egg!!

It was so cute when you took the magnifying glass
out of your fanny pack to take a closer look at the dino egg.
You're so smart and funny!


I'm proud of the cake creation!  You were so excited for the cake reveal.  :)
At first I wasn't sure how we would get a cake across town on the bike, but I settled on keeping it in the pan and just decorating the top.  Yummy!


It was so great to celebrate with new friends.  I love the tradition of the parents being wished "Congratulations" at the party.  It was so sweet.

We ended the day with a lovely Mexican dinner!  Who knew there would be Mexican here?  Well there is, and they celebrated our big boy properly with a fireworks dessert.  So much to be thankful for.  I am grateful for these four years with you and would be blessed to have many, many more!






Tuesday, March 4

Artis Zoo Day

I love a good zoo, and the Artis Zoo here does not disappoint.  It is just beautiful, and it is over 175 years old.  The boys and I have gone many times before so we were quite excited when we finally got to take Daddy all around a few Sundays ago.  Here you will see no pictures of the animals... just my guys!

We had a lovely lunch in the Two Cheetahs Cafe... with soft serve ice cream... yum!



Bateman was a big ol' boy climbing up the rope gym all the way to a really high slide.  So so brave.


The boys absolutely love the big giraffe slide.





 I said there were no animal pictures, but I forgot about the pretzel walruses.