Family Fun

Matthew has been asking us for a long time to go miniature golfing. Unfortunately, this summer was quite hectic (taking the bar, Seth being born, buying a house, etc), and we never made it out to golf in the warmth. Since then, there hasn't been a Saturday where we didn't have other obligations, it wasn't freezing cold, and it wasn't raining/snowing. Well, we finally had such a Saturday yesterday and we used the day for some miniature golfing family fun.

At first, Matthew needed help figuring out how to use the club.

He quickly caught on and was anxious to do it himself.

By the end, Matthew was doing very well by himself. (Note at the end of the video how he just drops his club on the carpet. He had a hard time understanding that leaving you club lying around in the way was not the best etiquette.)


He was also working hard on his approach shot, until he found a much more efficient way of getting the ball within inches of the hole.


Poor Seth came with us, but didn't get to do any golfing. At least he got to ride around the entire course, right?

After golfing, Julie remembered there is a neat little bakery in Ballard called "Cupcake Royale." Their main item is cupcake--all kinds of flavors and colors. Their counter almost looks like a donut shop with so many different kinds of cupcakes all behind the glass. Matthew chose the one that had an American flag in it.

After all that fun, we had to get home to let Seth get another nap. We had a lot of fun together. We wish we had more of these "family fun" times to spend together. If only things like work and chores didn't get in the way so much...

Matthew's Life in Birthday Cake

First Birthday:

Second Birthday:
Third Birthday:
Fourth Birthday:
A big shout out to Michelle, who helped me with Thomas this year. It was nice to actually have a professional on the job.

Rice Cereal

Seth had his first taste of rice cereal on Monday. He loved it. It's such a novel concept to have a child that actually opens hid mouth to be fed.



Each night since then we've been making it thicker. He's done well with it, until tonight. He's been sick with a gaging-type cough. We also had the great idea of hiding his vitamins in the cereal, not considering that rice cereal really doesn't have enough favor to hide anything. Needless to say, with one cough everything and then some came back up. He filled the trough of his baby bjorn bib. Yuck! Maybe it was too thick?!

Matthew's 4th Birthday

Matthew had his 4th birthday before New Years. We had all of the family over for Sunday dinner of Matthew's choosing: Mickey Mouse pasta and cheese, steamed broccoli, baked chicken, salad, and breadsticks. Matthew was so excited to open presents that he could hardly wait until after dinner.

Between Christmas and birthday, Matthew got really good at opening presents, including using his scissors to remove any ribbon.





Matthew is not one to hide his emotions in any way (good or bad). When he was opening presents, he was quick to show excitement for each new toy.





As usual, Julie went all out in making a cake. Matthew asked for a three-dimensional Thomas the Train cake, but we convinced him to save that one for his friend birthday party. Instead, Julie offered to put the Wonder Pets' heads on a cake (in case you are missing out on Wonder Pets, you can see an online episode here). Julie bought the 1/2 sheet cake with the white frosting, but she traced on the heads to the fronting with a toothpick and then added the color fronting stars on top. With all of those colors she ended up spending at least 5 hours working on all of it.



Matthew was so happy to have everyone singing to him and to get to blow out his candles.





We can't believe that it's already been 4 years since Matthew was born. It seems like only yesterday that he was born and spent that entire first night awake with Jon watching replays of bowl games on ESPN. We are so glad to have Matthew in our family and we love to watch him grow and to see his dynamic personality as it develops.