Catching Up!!

Much has happened since my last post! We added one more boy to the family...Austin Daniel on December 10th of last year. (hence the reason for not posting) So let's do a quick catch up...Starting with Ethan!

Ethan is now five and in K5 (homeschool). He loves to be in charge and organize his brothers to do activities the way he wants it. He loves to draw pictures, color, build with legos and play games on the iPad.

He LOVES spending time outside and especially in the "woods" by our house. He worked so hard with Jonathan to rake the leaves in the woods so they could have paths and rooms for their house. He has just gotten into watching non-cartoon movies like Lassie and Heidi. He loves when we read to him. This summer he took swimming lessons again and did well, even jumped off the diving board into the deep end. 

This fall he is on a soccer team. He focuses on the game most of the time, but can also be found doing cartwheels in the field or making silly faces. 

Ethan is my prime time helper with his little brothers. His face was so precious when he came to visit mommy and Austin in the hospital for the first time. He loves having a baby in the house for the most part, except when Austin cries. Ethan is ready for me to have 10 more babies! At all of Austin's different stages, Ethan has loved holding him and playing sweetly with him. He likes to go up into Austin's room after he wakes up from his nap and throw toys into Austin's crib for him to play with. He loves making Austin laugh, especially on road trips.

Ethan loves to dress up in his "hero" costumes and pretend he is either a good guy or a bad guy. He pretends he has a special power button on whatever he is wearing to make himself go fast.

Ethan loved doing special activities at Christmas, Valentines and Easter this year. I think we colored eggs 3 times because he enjoyed it so much, and we eat a lot of eggs :)

He climbs anything and everything. He climbed this VERY tall sand dune on a Massachusetts beach with Daddy. He told me that his favorite thing about being home is being able to climb on our "big" couch. (The couch in the 5th wheel is a love seat and attached to the wall.) He is always on the look out for a good climbing tree.

I recently found out that he loves taking pictures. I was scrolling through the pictures on our iPad/iPod and noticed about 50 pictures that I didn't take. Most of them were of Ethan's blanket and his "corner" or our house. Some were actually pretty good. Since that discovery, I've taken advantage of a new photographer in the family. Ethan took this picture of us while we were at the Anchorage Camp.

Ethan celebrated his 5th birthday this year. We had a pirate party with several friends from church. We played pin the patch on the pirate, made treasure maps, walked the plank, dug for treasure, and had a pinata. His special birthday gift was to go to Dutch Wonderland and ride the rides.

Ethan does well with learning new things at school. The hardest thing is to get him to sit down and do it. I'm trying to learn interesting ways to keep his hands busy while listening to me. Here he is on his first day of K5.

We are praying for him to have a desire to listen to God's Word and understand Jesus died for him. He knows that he is "outside the door" as he puts it and periodically asks questions. Wouldn't it be wonderful that the excitement that Ethan lives everyday of life would be transferred to excitement to serve Jesus?