Happy birthday buddy!!

Grant - where have the last 5 years gone??!! I cannot believe that my little man is FIVE years old. You have been SUCH a blessing to us. Here are some fun facts to help us remember you being FIVE!

1) You LOVE playing sports, especially baseball. You played t-ball for the first time this year and have had an absolute blast. It's been so much fun watching your games (and we've gotten many laughs in the process!). You also have a riot playing with your cousins. We've got you signed up to play soccer in the fall, so we'll see how that goes!

2) You really enjoy playing with Legos and Trio. You've always been our "little engineer" as you amaze us with what you are able to assemble and the short amount of time it takes you to do so. You love following the instruction booklets and are very good at it!

You and Trent playing with the Trio castles you built.

3) Along with your fabulous Lego building skills comes your uncanny math abilities. You ask for math problems at home and as we are riding in the car. We can give you a double-digit math problem to add (ex. 43 + 38) and you can solve it! (as long as it doesn't surpass 100 - we're not quite there yet!) We still haven't figured out how you do it! You're not nearly as big of a fan of subtraction as you are addition.

4) It is very obvious you are the son of a driver's education provider. You love reading road signs and making sure mommy is going the speed limit. You know virtually every road sign out there, and if you don't, you make sure to ask!

5) You can officially swim now on your own without anyone's help. You will jump off the diving board at swimming lessons and swim all the way to the shallow end; however, you still need to work on keeping your face in the water and doing long strokes with your arms. You tend to tune Ms. Kim and Mr. Mitch out when they tell you to put your face in! You'd rather doggie paddle and keep that head above the water.

6) You like to color and draw. I have a very large collection of "house plans" that you've put together for mommy and daddy as we prepare to build this summer.

As you can see, turning five doesn't mean a new love for wearing clothes. You still like to wear as few of them as possible!

7) You love your sister dearly, although it doesn't always show. You guys can be best friends one minute and then fight like cats and dogs the next. One thing you are fabulous at, though, is sharing your treats. Any time you would get a birthday treat from preschool, you would always ask Brooke if she wanted half of it. You even were willing to give her one of the two extra tokens you got at Chuck E. Cheese this weekend. Your generosity melts my heart.

8) You are definitely getting very independent, which can be good or bad, depending on the situation. You are typically more than willing to help mom and dad out for many household and outdoor tasks; however, there are just some things I'm not sure I'm ready to relinquish to your control yet (ex. pouring your own milk on your cereal!).

Helping dad pick up sticks in the yard by driving the lawn mower (don't worry - Eric is right by him and the mower is going less than 1 mph).

9) You spend a ton of time on your bike. You ride around in circles in the driveway and on the cement pad next to the house and love it when we take bike rides to the park.

10) You thoroughly enjoy spending time at the beach. You love to play in the sand, play in the water, ride your bike, climb Mt. Pisgah, etc, etc, etc.

At the top of the steps of Mt. Pisgah. As Grant will tell you - there are exactly 239 of them, which leads us to my next point.

11) Your memory never ceases to amaze us. You can remember events from a few years ago (ex. just the other day you spontaneously pointed out to us an area in the living room and told us that you vomited on it 2 1/2 years ago when your friends were over to play, and when we went to the dentist two weeks ago, as we got in the car, you recalled the toys that you and Brooke had picked out the last time you were at the dentist six months ago). You love reading books, and have many of them memorized, too. You remember the directions to places and what roads we need to take to get there (again, son of a driver's ed. teacher???). My hope is that when you are a teenager your memory doesn't cause undue stress in our household by you choosing not to do homework because of the likelihood that you will ace the tests without studying! :)

Grant - we love you soooooo much and look forward to what age five has in store for you!!