Brady the Brave

We have had such a busy 6 weeks! There is so much I could tell you, so I will start with December 18th: Brady turned 5!

I can hardly believe how quickly the last 5 years have gone and how big and smart and wonderful Brady is. And so BRAVE! In the last 17 months we have had two big moves (the first from Caronport, Saskatchewan to Spruce Grove, Alberta and the second from the Grove to Aberdeen, Scotland) which can be trying on anyone. But especially trying for a very shy and introverted preschooler. Throw in the birth of your twin baby brothers and the decrease in parental involvement that forces on you, attending a number of different churches, losing your cousins when they move overseas, moving overseas, too, starting school fulltime within a week of that move, joining a football (soccer) team with a coach with a heavy Scottish accent, finding another church.... (Whew!) Brady has been so brave through it all!

He is also very stubborn (which drives his mommy crazy sometimes) and it is almost impossible to get him to change his mind on things. Still, we are so proud of him for being true to himself even through his stubbornness. A quick example: He was struggling with understanding all the instructions as football practice and was the youngest and smallest boy on the team (which was for 5 to 8 year olds). He decided he didn't want to play anymore and no amount of requests or demands from me or Jon would make him budge. I was worried that he would regret his decision to quit but he is totally great with it, actually. He still loves football, but has decided to wait until next fall to try playing on the team again.

Here is the Birthday Boy opening gifts before school with the crew.

And here he is at his long-awaited party! Brady was soooo excited to have his friends over to celebrate and decided months in advance that he wanted it to be a Wall*E party. (That really just meant that we did a Wall*E cake.) Because he was turning five we let him have 5 friends over (and didn't make him count brothers!). He chose 3 boys from school and 2 girls from church. They had lots of fun.

On a different note, here is a picture of the boys all playing together. The big boys love making boats and airplanes and forts. Here they are on their fishing boat (using badminton racquets and blankets as fishing poles and nets). You probably can't tell, but Jesse and Matty were ecstatic when we actually let them join them on the boat instead of pretending they were fish swimming in the ocean.