The Birthday Boy!

Matthew Warren, my little Bubba, is six years old. Wow, time flies. He is such an awesome kid. He is so sweet and so smart. He wants to do be just like his dad, and loves to sport his Coast Guard hat while working with his tools in the garage. He is the best brother I've ever seen, and is Beth's partner in crime, Carrie's favorite playmate, and Katy's loyal protector and helper. He spends his afternoons riding his bike, playing baseball, and tinkering with his phone. Yes, his phone. He loves gadgets, and was lucky enough to inherit a very nice "broken" cell phone from a friend. It isn't activated, but can play games and take pictures. It's mildly concerning that my six year old is already more tech savvy than his old parents.

 I delivered two dozen cupcakes with tours of gooey icing to his kindergarten class yesterday. His teacher got me back by letting him eat four, and then sending the rest home on the school bus. I had to laugh. After baseball practice he had another cake that I had made more the family, and opened a few presents. Tomorrow is his actual birthday party, which will be a picnic at the park with friends. I just hope we have good weather. In our family we do parties every other year, and this is the year of parties. It's been a crazy few months! In off years we celebrate just as a family.

My four little ones

When Matt and I started our family. we always knew that we wanted a house full of children. We also knew that we wanted to have them close in age. When Katy was born, we had had four children in five years, and that was by no means easy. For us though, it has been worth it. We move so often that our children won't have any childhood or lifelong friends. Not in the way most kids can anyway. What they do have is each other. They share the memories of our homes inConnecticut, Mississippi, and DC. When their Daddy is away they know we are still family. We still work together, play together, and keep things going. I love that Katy is now old enough to be included in most things they do. I never have to say "play with your sister." It is just a given that she belongs with them. Last week I found this note taped to Matt's door. The "invite list" included Beth, Matt, Carrie, Katy, and their cat Waffles. No Mommy and Daddy! I just had to laugh. How I would love to be a fly on the wall and find out what their top secret mission involved.

Happy Easter!

We had kind of a crazy Easter weekend here. Big Matt had to work Saturday and Sunday, and I was sick, so we didn't even make it to church. That made me sad as a I love a good Easter service. We did go last week for Palm Sunday, so that's something at least. We managed to squeeze in all the other "usuals" at some time or another. We did Easter baskets on Friday so Matt could join us, dyed eggs earlier in the week, and had an Easter egg hunt and cook-out Sunday evening.

The kids have been on spring break for the last ten days, and I am sad to see them head back to school tomorrow. They are excited to go back though, and want to see all their friends and teachers. I'm not sure how excited they will be when I wake them up at 6:30 tomorrow morning though. We have really gotten off our schedule this past week. We weren't able to go anywhere this year, due to Matt's work schedule, but we had a lot of local adventures. I took the older three roller skating for the first time, we went swimming at an indoor pool, we went bowling, we went to the movies, we met friends at a park and had a picnic, we drove a ways to a HUGE playground in VA, we had a family game night, a movie night, and just generally enjoyed our time together.