Aedan’s Graduation

I am starting to panic as I have to get Aedan ready for Kindergarten  which starts in a month and then I realize I never posted pics of his graduation (among many other things…)

Bear with me, pic overload but BONUS there is a video at the end! Feel free to skip to that.

Aedan attended a preschool at a local evangelical church and they did an excellent job with him.  They worked in Bible themes with some of the lessons and even taught them some songs which sound funny to me but then I wonder if Primary songs sound funny to everyone else who is not Mormon.  Anyway, this picture is of him singing:

Thank You, God, for who I am
I don't have to be a Superman
Thank You, God, for who I am
All I wanna be is Your best friend

Aedan was a shy kid in his class.  He barely spoke to his teachers and seriously this is the best smile I could get from him as he received his diploma.

Someone’s mom went all out.  Nope not me.

Aedan’s teachers Mrs. Ilkow and Mrs. Turner.

Aedan’s Lego graduation gift from us. I spent some time making a funny lego card for him because for some reason this kid LOVES cards.  Especially if they are well thought out.

We celebrated with lunch at the place of his choice, Burger King. 

We are so proud of the many things he has learned this past year!  He is reading books on his own now, his favorites being all of the Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie books (they are hilarious, not your Dick and Jane).  He is a very methodic boy, which makes Legos a perfect fit for him and he can follow the instructions on his own.  He has learned to LOVE dancing, thanks to Just Dance 2 and Michael Jackson’s Experience on the Wii.  His graduation program was full of song and dance and he shocked us all (incl. his teachers) by his extreme dance moves. 

It came out of nowhere.

His teachers were cracking up because he is NEVER like that at school.

Afterwards we asked Aedan why he was dancing SO well and he said that he wanted to “win the dance”.  Apparently he thought it was a game like the Wii. 

Here, see for yourself. I don’t think I need to even tell you where he is in the crowd. He is the one knocking other kids down with his moves.

Funny kid.  We love you Aedan!  Good job!

I’m a Big Boy now!!

Someone just got a little older…

The long anticipated Birthday Day has finally arrived.  Actually, it was a week ago and we had a birthday party for him on the Saturday before but he has been asking about his birthday every day since then.  This is how his birthday morning began:

Aedan wakes up.

Us: “Happy Birthday Aedan!”

Him: “Thanks! Are my friends all downstairs?”

Me: “Er, no.  Remember you had a party yesterday?”

Him: “Oh. (a little crestfallen)”

That is because he thoroughly enjoyed his party and his actual birthday fell on a Sunday making it a bit anti-climatic for him.  His party went a little something like this:

 

    

 

Can you tell what it is and where it’s from?  I spent way too much time on this cupcake cake… and way too much sugar too.

 

  

To sum up, toddler mayhem!  Roughly 2 hours of friends and family jumping on trampolines and diving into foam pits and eating loads of sugar and opening hordes of presents.  We combined his party with his two cousins A and A whose birthdays are two weeks after Aedan’s.  Oh what fun!  We tried to come up with a theme for the party that would please all three cousins and we just couldn’t so in light of the new Disney/Pixar’s UP movie, we did balloons.  It was fun!

   

As I mentioned earlier, his actually birthday was a bit of a bummer for him I think.  No party, no pals, leftover cupcakes….  Luckily we did breakfast in bed (he put in a request for waffles, bacon, and orange juice) and had some presents we withheld so he could have something to open on his birthday.  It was quite a fun weekend for him though!

I can’t believe he is 3 already and the kind of gifts he received are getting way too smart for me.  That is just the beginning I suppose… Oh Aedan! I sure love you kid!

“They’re my favorite”

Aedan has some new favorite friends, cousin D and cousin A (Neal’s brother R’s kids).  I couldn’t believe how quickly he became friends with them.  Cousin D and Aedan have almost identical interests in life – trains, cars, airplanes, etc.  After we saw them the first time Aedan kept saying that they were his favorites and so we couldn’t leave without letting them play again.

  I know without a doubt that cousin D would be Aedan’s best friend if we lived closer.  They just hit if off so well, better than any body else I’ve seen close to his age.  I know Aedan misses him a lot!

 

I enjoy doing girly things every now and then and I love my princess nieces.  My niece A isn’t too keen on wearing clips and bows in her hair (oh she has the most gorgeous curls!) but she pulled them out to show me and so I tried them all on at once. 

 That was enough to get her to try them all on too apparently.  I love this smile!

Well I don’t have a ton of pictures of the boys playing as they decided it was uncool to have mom hanging around while they had some serious play time (look at that, I embarrass him already :)  But here is a silly video of Aedan, cousin D, cousin A, and eventually uncle R doing nothing but crazy stuff.  For some reason they saw a battery in the trash and started saying “yucky battery” and that gave them the giggles so they kept saying it over and over.  It turned into a full out silly activity which I caught on video.  I sure love these kids!

We are so glad to still have great-grandma’s around!

We were able to visit Aedan’s great-grandma (Neal’s grandma) shortly after she turned 91 last month! She just received her 91st great-grandchild a couple days ago and as far as we know, we will be having her 92nd in September. That is amazing, so many people in Neal’s side of the family!

Great-Aunt H takes care of great-grandma and keeps everything running in the home! Aedan had so much fun with her, she is great with kids!

I hope if/when I get to be 91 I am as sprightly as Aedan’s great-grandma! She still knows how to have fun with the young ones! Here is a video of Aedan and great-grandma playing with a balloon. She even gets in a little Kung-Fu action too… so cute!

I think we might have a little guitar enthusiast in the family

My bro-in-law J and sister C were good to spend time with Aedan.

Aedan sure perked up when they brought out one of their guitars.  Aedan was so excited to play it!

 

Here’s a little video of Aedan jamming with uncle J!

 

Great Grandma visit

Aedan and I spent a few days with my grandma in northern Utah. My mom came with us for a day and we met up with my aunt D as well. Ladies night! While there we got probably 18 inches of snow in 10 hours and it was so nonstop and we were working so hard to shovel the driveway and dig out my car (twice) that I really didn't stop to take a picture. We were snowed in and so spent some good time playing with each other. Here is a video of Aedan reading with his great grandma, we wish these moments could last forever!

Birthday Wish!

The video says it all. Aedan is such a good little buddy!

I had a good day in spite of turning 30. Today I spilled a tupperware full of dried black beans all over the floor, I finished making my family calendar for 2009, I bruised my pinky toe again, we finally took Aedan to get some pictures taken after multiple attempts, I took Aedan on a carousel ride, my Neal did a fabulous job of cleaning/grocery shopping/picking up our bbq dinner and my boys surprised me with some flowers, I cut out gingerbread and baked, our CO alarm went off for a while, Aedan took hours to finally go to sleep, and I had many wonderful well wishes today! I'm sure you want explanations for some of these (don't you?) but I'm going to put it off because I can...

Aedan Talk: Who taught him this?!

Mom: Do you want to go to the store?
Aedan: I don't want to say no. Just want to say yes.
Mom: So say yes then.
Aedan: Yes!

Aedan: It's sprinkley!
Mom: I think you mean sparkley.
Aedan: No! Sprinkley!

Dad: Aedan look! We are all wearing blue! Look, (as he points) baby blue, baby blue, and baby blue! We match!
Aedan: No, dats the daddy blue, mommy blue, ....

Aedan: I want chicken nuddits...

And at long last, instead of mom all the time
Aedan: I want my dad

Mostly though, Aedan has given up a little on his vocab and has turned his attention to body language in conversation. He will say a bunch of gibberish and practice his moves to emphasize his point...

And this is his "yai yai" song which when I was little, my grandma from Hong Kong would always say "yai yai" to us when we were doing something bad...

Fortunate Event #6 - A Lawful Lot

A week ago from today we had a chance to walk around the beautiful campus of University of Michigan and my brother O, who goes to law school there, showed us around some of the law buildings he uses. I don't know how they get much studying done as there is so much to look at! I know it must be a weird idea doing a post on someone else's school but we enjoyed it and thought it was worth remembering.

I love the old building motif. For a second we thought we had walked into Hogwarts. This is their library and study hall.

Another law building has several stained glass windows, each with a small picture depicting each area of law, be it divorce, inheritance, robbery, etc. When looking closely at some of the pictures though, you begin to wonder if they failed to match picture with the correct term. This is a picture of the murder panel but it looks like they are just hunting down a bird in a tree and the picture for larceny had someone stabbing another so I just don't know. Maybe law and art don't always go hand in hand...

The classrooms were just as I would have imagined law school rooms to be but with added modern conveniences of course. Aedan liked roaming around the rooms.

He just might be aspiring to become a judge himself... Check out his first tv judge impersonations right here!

Sing us a song, you're the piano man!

Aedan has a new friend on loan!  Our good friends Miriam and David were given this cute little Schoenhut Toy Piano as a gift for their baby boy (who was born yesterday! woot!) and they felt like they didn't have space for it until they move next year so they were so kind to offer it up for Aedan's use.  Now we've had a piano for longer than we've had Aedan so piano's aren't exactly new to him but he fell in love with this one as soon as he saw it! 

This pic was taken in our front room but we've since then moved it to his bedroom next to our other piano.  Now he claims we have an "Aedan piano and a Daddy piano".  For some reason he really likes the bench and carries it around the house.   I was a little hesitant to take it at first because Aedan has his moments where he doesn't care about being gentle... but he is really enjoying it and it makes such a pleasant sound!  It kind of sounds like chimes of a clock if that makes sense. 

Well here, you might as well see him play it

Birthday Wish

Happy Birthday to our adorable red-headed nephew/cousin A!  This kid need only flash his dimples to win us over!  Going through the pictures we have of him, I am surprised to see that almost every photo has him with his pacifier.  I am missing one with those darling dimples!! Well, rather than post my pictures of him, I will post this short video clip of cousin A and Aedan from April 2007.  I know it is an older video but I think it is pretty funny to watch these two cousins interact with a non-germaphobic kind of love...  Aedan never did go for the pacifier and so when he sees his cousin using one he likes to reach over to "pull the plug" so to speak.  We love this little guy and can't wait to celebrate with him!