Jacob Gary

Unbelievable. Seriously unreal to me that I have a six-year-old. Six years ago today, well not today, but on August 3rd (I know, bad blogging mother, get over it) Jacob Gary was placed in my arms and I knew life would never be the same. Six years ago. 6? Six. Five is a milestone, six is just plain old. It's like turning 21...cool milestone. 22...old. And not only is he old, he's also ginormous. Not one ounce of fat on his body (he and Ty have the same size waist), but he is as tall and skinny as a...shoot what's tall and skinny? My 19 inch baby has turned into the six-year-old equivalent of Yao Ming. And I can't for the life of me find a full-body picture of Jake in all his tall glory, so that one will have to do. For those of you who haven't seen Jake in the last 24 hours, he's already grown another 4 inches. He's 6 years old and approximately 6 feet tall. Ok, obviously I'm kidding. But I swear that when I stare at him for a few minutes I can actually see him growing.

Alright already. Besides the fact that I can not get over his height, I also can not get over him losing teeth. He's lost his bottom front 2 teeth, and now he's got one upper tooth that is hanging on for dear life and makes him look like he's got a snaggletooth. Wonder if spellcheck knows what a snaggletooth is. Nope.

Enough about Jake's physical characteristics. Except I'll just throw in real quick that he's got me terrified about how many girls are going to be calling my house giggling in a few years time. Lord help me.

My happy, laid-back little baby boy has turned in to such a sweet and tough and funny young man. There's moments where my heart actually hurts I love him so much. He was getting out of the car to go to a backyard Bible club the other day, and he jumped out, started running, then abruptly stopped all by himself and said, "OH, I forgot," and came running back to the car to kiss and hug me. "Love you, Mom." Yep. Heart squeezing.

He's also quite a little missionary. There's been multiple times lately where he'll strike up a conversation with someone at the store and ask them if they know Jesus, or tell them about our church, and that he's learned the names of the books of the Old Testament by singing a song in his Sunday school class. We were on our way to the dollar store a few days ago and he announced from the back seat, "The dollar store is the best thing EVER. Oh, no wait, Jesus is the best thing ever, and THEN the dollar store." He prayed for Jurgi every night that he was here, and he also rarely forgets to include in his prayers, "and thank you for my brother and my mom and dad."

As sweet and tender-hearted as he is, he's definitely all boy. He got a rapid-fire Nerf gun for his birthday and he and Dan and Ty have been running around the house for days yelling and shooting and laughing like crazy. And that's when he's not outside playing basketball or making soccer goals out of 2 shoes. His favorite show on TV (besides cartoons like Handy Manny or Arthur) is Wipe-Out, which is pretty much just laughing at people who hurt themselves. All boy. And the birthday theme this year? Batman. It's been Hot Wheels (4th birthday), Transformers (5th) and Batman. No lace doilies in the decor at one of Jake's parties. Or any party I throw...but you get the point.

Living with Jake is constant comedy. I got him some shoes a while back that were 2 sizes bigger than the ones he was wearing that I bought (too big for him) 9 months ago. I laced them up and he proceeded to go strutting around, and my heart stopped for a second. Then I said, "Dude, you look like a man." To which he quickly replied, "YOU look like a man," and we both burst into laughter. Then just tonight he was wearing a new hat that Auntie Becca gave him (Stud, with a capital S) and he had it twisted sideways. He looked in the mirror and stated, "I look like a DJ." Dan and I laughed and said, "A DJ?" And he said, "Yeah, you know those guys who go...pssshpssshpsssh" and he was moving his hand like he was spinning a record. Who needs TV with this kid around? Hysterical.

Here comes a Disneyland preview. I'm not forgetting. Avoiding...yes. Forgetting, no.

Jake, you are my delight. I love you more than you could ever understand, and I am so excited to watch and cheer you on as you grow into a little man. Happy birthday, baby!

Summer...part 1 of 36

And now the moment you've all been waiting for...the summer update. Now I know what you're thinking. How could she possibly write a blog explaining the 4+ weeks of silence we've just experienced, when it typically takes us 4+ weeks to finish reading even one of her ridiculously long stories? Or, sentences, in this case. What would that blog post even look like? Well, it could look something like this:

Token apology for not updating readers. Assurance the author will not ever again wait so long between posts. Confusion about where to begin the update. An aha! moment and clever segue into the first of many stories. Picture. Attempt at brief explanation under picture. Repeat until author runs out of time and or energy. Concluding remarks. Second promise of timely next post. Witty final sentence.

Sweet. I guess I'm done. No? Allllright. But seriously, you may want to grab a drink, put a movie or 2 on for the kids, be sure you've emptied your bladder recently, do a little stretching...cause you're gonna be sitting here for a while.

Okay, June 28th was the last day I updated you. Jurgi had only been with us for 3 days, but we knew that he was a perfect fit for our family. For the next 2 weeks, our days were full of activity. I couldn't help but throw another baby shower in the middle of it. Cause that's what I do. (We miss you already Matt and Sharon!) We had barbecues with friends, Jurgi and the boys shot approximately 8 million baskets and made 3 million goals with a soccer ball, and Jurgi toured downtown Portland where he became passionate about someday eating a bacon topped donut while looking at the line winding around the block at VooDoo Donuts (the bacon donut dream was realized before he left). Jurgi inspired us to have a new appreciation for soccer while faithfully watching the World Cup even in the early morning hours, so we took him to a Portland Timbers Soccer game with the boys. We played tennis after I dusted off my racket and my old bones. I'm definitely not going to wait another 8 years to do that again. Jurgi went with us to a 4th of July barbecue with Dan's family and then witnessed Jake's near death fireworks experience. Dang, I guess I have to explain that one. Oh, here I'll just put a picture instead and attempt a brief explanation under it. Sparkler + wind = shirt bursting into flames and 5 year old grabbing the chunk of flaming sparkler and obtaining 2nd degree burns on his fingers. Oh and on his chest of course. Right underneath that charred hole in the shirt in case you were wondering.

And then we went to Disneyland. Next post. Oh crimeny, Jake's birthday is tomorrow. Next to next post. I cannot ask you to sit through the stories of my kids' first trip to Disneyland on top of all the other things I'm jabbering on about...mainly because I'm just plain refusing to write them right now because I'm getting carpal tunnel just thinking about it.

Okay, so when we were in Disneyland getting heatstroke (but still having an insanely good time), Jurgi got to go to the Washington Family Ranch for a week at camp. He said it was an incredible time, which makes me excited because I get to take the kids there the last weekend in August. I get to be the camp nurse. For a group of First Responders. Because I'm sure they'll need me to tell them what to do in an emergency.

Back from Disneyland and back to our last week with Jurgi. We went up to Mt. Hood to the Alpine Slides and the other adventures they have there. Mountain sliding, go-cart riding, bungee trampoline-ing, putt-putt golfing. Oh yes, and then there was the bungee jumping. Jurgi got talked into strapping himself onto a bungee cord and launching himself off a 100 foot platform. I prayed the whole time that he'd survive so his mother wouldn't have to come to the USA and kill me for letting him do it. He said it was awesome, and that he's got to do something terrifying again if he comes back next summer, so we agreed that I would go skydiving with him if he comes back. So save up your money, Jurgi! Not to pay for the skydiving. To pay me to get on that plane with you. Me and my big mouth.

We had a final dinner with all the Basque students, where they cooked us a traditional Basque meal. I would definitely not lose weight over there.

The week flew by and soon it was time for Jurgi to go home. We shared our last bacon donuts, watched our last American movies together, the boys played their last games of Wii (Bowser Castle, Jurgi!!) and I packed up a tupperware of chocolate chip cookies to cram into his suitcase, gave him a photo album of his time here in the US, and we shared some hugs and said our goodbyes. Jake and Ty couldn't have loved a big brother more. Just the other day Ty said, "I wonder what Jurgi is doing right now." We miss you, Jurgi!
And now for the witty final sentence. Yep, I know I'm skipping the concluding remarks. I like to switch things up now and then. Until next time. Yikes, that should be tomorrow, because tomorrow is Jake's 6th birthday. But I really can't write about it until he has his parties. I have to have pictures after all. That gives me a good 3 days to avoid Blogger.

I'll write about Disneyland sometime before 2011. That you can take to the bank.