Zaiden turns 5

 Our baby bean is all grown up. Zaiden celebrated his fifth birthday this year. He has really grown a lot (almost the same size as Zander who is 2 years older). His personality continues to shine through. He has a smile and a laugh that continues to charm everyone around him. He is a silly guy who loves to listen to music and loves to memorize theme songs to his favorite cartoons. He was able to learn Zander's piano recital song by listening even without instruction. He has made good progress with writing his name, all letters and numbers. He is very smart and knows his letter sounds and has learned how to spell many words. He continues to be a lover of all things trains and enjoys our almost daily walks across the train tracks. He also really loves animals and we look forward to returning to the zoo. He still loves rhinos and orca whales, but his latest favorites are red pandas and anteaters. Zaiden also really loves sports and loves playing basketball, tennis, ice hockey (in the basement) and bowling. As everything else this year, our birthday plans were changed by the COVID pandemic and we celebrated with a day full of "all things Zaiden loves" and a small family gathering with his aunts. We luckily had beautiful weather and the boys were also excited to set up our backyard pool for the summer. We love watching Zaiden grow up and look forward to what our year will bring. 

We went all out with decorations including a morning balloon drop. We also had a piñata, scavenger hunt and birthday donuts

Zaiden's Pre-school graduation

 2020 has been such a crazy year, but everyone has been pulling together and being creative. Although Zaiden's pre-school was cut short with the pandemic hitting in March leading to an unexpected and prolonged closure of his school. We are still so proud of him and how much he has grown and learned during his time. We will all have many lasting memories and friendships from our days at Christies Carousel. His teachers and school staff did a great job of planning and having all the kids celebrate their graduation with a socially distanced car parade. He was just as excited to receive his graduation certificate from dad's Jeep. He was full of smiles when saying good-bye to his teachers

 

 

2020 Spring Break

Due to the Covid -19 Pandemic, our spring break plans turned into Spring Break staycation shelter in place style. School was closed for the week prior to spring break and homeschool/remote learning was implemented. We decided to make the most of spring break and take a break from learning to spend time as a family. Of course, all of the museums, zoos, parks and everything else was also closed so we had to be creative of things we could do at home. We had one day of the weather cooperating and decided to enjoy a nice day taking a hike at Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin (all Illinois state parks were closed). We came up with the idea of hosting theme days with nightly movie night and the kids did really well having fun with free play on their own during the day followed by afternoon/night activities. We were impressed with how flexible they were and rolled with the idea of a spring break at home instead of our planned trip. they could have been bummed, but rallied and really enjoyed all the of the activities planned. We'll just have to put off our KC waterpark trip and seeing our St. Louis friends another time! Although we had a lot of fun and enjoyed family time, we hope Spring Break 2021 looks a little different!

Zander turns 7!

Seriously.... how does time go so fast?!? Zander is 7 already and is an amazing young man. He is doing so well in first grade. He loves his teachers and has a lot of really great friends. He has kept many friends from last year as he has been lucky to have several of them on his baseball and soccer teams. He also continues to be best friends with Matthew. He was so excited to have them all to Jump Zone for his birthday party this year. He is so smart and has qualified for challenge classes in reading and math. He is also taking piano lessons and is getting pretty good. He continues to be a Lego master and loves robotics, crafts circuits, etc. He has also started working on cross stitch and of course, picked up on this quickly. He is helpful and likes to help with chores and likes to help with cooking. He has mastered tying his shoes. He likes to teach his brother things and was really helpful in teaching Zaiden to ride a bike and is showing him piano. He worked really hard over the summer to learn about, read about and earn money to buy a fish and a few weeks after school started, introduced, Steve a Betta fish to our family. He has also developed a love of reading and has read all of the Captain Underpants books. We love this little boy and are so lucky to watch him grow into the special guy he is.

Christmas 2019

Christmas is one of our favorite times of year. We are always so excited to put up of Christmas tree and decorations right after Thanksgiving. We have no trouble getting into the Christmas spirit when we have our Elf, Zell tricking us every morning! This year we enjoyed a weekend celebrating in Iowa with Zeb's family as well as celebrating with Jazzie's family with aunt Nellie and uncle Chris hosting at their place in the city. Of course, the boys were super spoiled by everyone. We spent a quiet Christmas Eve at home and a church service and woke up the next morning with some great Santa gifts! They both received robes and an Osmo to share. Zander asked for a sled and a marble run and also got a new baseball glove. Zaiden got a huge train set and the Polar express book. We also had a special Christmas this year when we were blessed with unusually warm almost 60 degree weather. It was pretty nice to spend Christmas day playing in the sunshine instead of the snow!