This boy continues to bring joy to many people throughout his days. He is kind, caring, inquisitive, and pretty content. He still loves to play with his vehicles, but he seems to be branching out into different ways to play. In fact, he has followed his sisters lead in obsessing about Perler beads. His favorite things to make are jets.
While we were still up at the Colba's for Thanksgiving, Ethan received his birthday gift from his grandparents. Not only does Ethan have a new catapult truck, but he also was able to help Grandpa put it together in his workshop. I think both grandfather and grandson considered this a very special memory.
Sunday morning arrived with much celebration. Cards, gifts, breakfast french toast, singing, finding 4s, etc. Ethan has been counting down his sleeps until his birthday for several weeks now.
We worshiped at church before having Ethan's chosen birthday foods: macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. He's certainly a typical kid in some respects.
Instead of asking for one of our family favorites for dessert, he wanted to pick out a cookies and cream pie at the grocery store. Not only was it less work for mom, but everyone considers these treats extra special nowadays :)
After lunch, we surprised the kids with a birthday trip up to the Dells (in lieu of a birthday party) to help Ethan celebrate his big milestone. Plus, we had a bit of money left on our gift card from last year and decided this would be a perfect opportunity to use it :)
The Kalahari was already decked out for the Christmas season.
And our kids were thrilled to have a fun mini-vacation, especially since they didn't have school on Monday.
Ethan decided that we should play in the theme park before going into the waterpark. We attempted our family's first adventure with miniature golf. Ethan enjoyed himself, but I'm not sure how much the rest of us did.
It took our family a L-O-N-G time to get through each hole.
Anna tried standing to hit the balls, but we learned that sitting was easier and faster for her.
Needless to say, we didn't keep score :)
Ethan also wanted to participate in the bumper boats.
Unfortunately, even though Ethan is 4 years old, he's not quite 42" tall so he wasn't able to do the go-karts. But the girls did, and they had fun.
After a quick dinner in our room, we headed down to the water park for a couple of hours. We spent our whole time on Sunday evening in the wave pool/beach area as well as in the mid-sized waterslide space. Matt and I carried Anna up a few times so she could go down the mid-sized waterslides. Ethan just kept going up, sliding down, going up, sliding down, going up, sliding down, ... We ended our evening in the hot tub before heading up to our room for an attempt at a restful night's sleep.
Monday morning we enjoyed breakfast at Cracker Barrel before getting packed up and ready to tackle the water park one more time. Since we hadn't done any of the tall waterslides the night before, we made sure to go down those. I think between Matt and I, Anna was carried up to the top half a dozen times so she could ride the rafts down. Our bodies were sore by the end of the day.
Two hours later we had played in the pool, done some mid-sized water slides again, and gone down the tall waterslides as much as our legs could handle. The grumpiness of our kids later in the day was worth all of the smiles on their faces during our 24 hours at the Kalahari. This was probably the perfect way to celebrate Ethan's birthday this year.
Prayers for Ethan
Thanksgving
Please give thanks that Ethan is a happy, healthy, typically developing 4 year old.
Please thank God that our family is blessed to spend time with Ethan every day.
Please give thanks for all of Ethan's attributes and their affect on the rest of us.
Requests
Please ask God to continue maturing the faith that is already growing in his heart.
Please pray that God continues to give us wisdom and strength as we continue to develop our parent relationship with him.
Please ask God to continue to shine through Ethan's life to those around him.
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