Stories From A Life Gone Crazy: Jack turned 5

Jack's birthday was this week and he turned 5! A whole hand! The whole hand is a big deal to kids. He has told many people he is 5. We went to a sit down lunch at McDonalds, this is compared to our eat it in the car lunches at McDonalds, and an older gentleman approached us to comment on the boys when Jack loudly proclaimed, "I am 5 today," and held out his whole hand to show him.

He was able to celebrate his birthday at school today. We made a poster with pictures representing all the years of his life. In the picture where he is holding Luke we put age 3 because in just a few days he was going to be 3, but when he got in front of the class he said, "I am not 3 in this picture, I am 2. I don't know why they put 3- that is wrong." Later Ms. Heather asked him what he wanted to do the most this year and it could be anything at all. He responded quite quickly that he wanted to learn to read. He is starting to learn now, but it is the very early stages. We were reading the other night when he looked at the book and said, "Why does this page have the word NO on it?" So that was fun. He also told me the water heater said Burn Hot Water. I went to look and it did say Burn and Hot but not Water- there was just a picture of water- but he correctly pointed to the words Burn and Hot when I asked him to show me which one was which.

He is really into Mario Brothers right now. So he got a Mario figurine pack for his birthday. We really wanted to get him a Mario DQ cake but after I kept trying to think of ways to do it the lady had to explain to me there were copyright issues involved. We settled for Dinosaurs and ended up having lots of fun with them because we realized after eating the cake and still having some left, that Dinosaurs get hungry too, and they ate a ton of cake!!

Then today Jack's uncle/godfather drove into town to go to Chuck E Cheese with us. Jack and Pete came up with some story about how once the bell rang Danny pulled his motorcycle out from under his desk and drove like a crazy mad man out of his classroom through campus and on the street trying to get away from the police who ended up chasing him because he was so insane.

Jack is a fantastic older brother and a huge help to me and Pete. He loves to cook, make up stories, be read to, cut paper, practice writing his letters, play Trouble, get into trouble, ride bikes, play hide-and-seek, play computer games with Pete, play cars, and just hang out with his family. He is an awesome kid.