Happy Birthday Nick!

 Once upon a time there was a pregnant woman who was 41 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  She was tired of her parents having to sit around waiting for her baby to come so they could watch her first born.  She was mean and unpleasant due to the heartburn, and back aches. She was uncomfortable and she was tired of people telling her that her child would come out when it was ready, because she no longer cared about the child's time table. She demanded that the midwife get that baby out of her immediately.  The midwife took pitty and induced pregnancy.  Later that day a 9 pound child came out and the nurses called him the "sumo baby" because he was so much bigger than all the other babies.  Three years later that baby is still pretty darn big for his age. He is a loving, sweet, intelligent, caring little boy.

Nick had a great third birthday! 

He received his very own tent from Grammy and Pop.  He was kind enough to share it with Maya and his big bro.

We took Nick to a bear sanctuary, where we saw this bear enjoying the sun with its legs straight up in the air.

Lucas enjoyed the bears too!  The bears were very well fed and had obviously landed in bear paradise.

Little Nick Nack was very excited to see the bears too.

I discovered that my camera had a panoramic feature.  I think if you click on the picture it will get larger?  Anyway.  I enhanced the color of the sky because it makes the clouds pop out better.  This is looking back at Apgar villiage - close to where we are living.

The birthday boy enjoyed his party favors.  Even though we weren't able to celebrate with all his friends in Rio Rancho, we still had a nice celebration.

Nick LOVES fire, so we put many lit candles on his cake so he could blow them all out.  His face says it all.  He was thrilled.

Nick picked the color of cake, the type of icing, and the flavor of the cake.  Pineapple cake, with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles.  He was very specific. 

The hat was pretty popular too.

After dinner we went down to Lake McDonald and played in the rocks. 

There were clumps of moss and lichen and ferns everywhere.  I am excited to see all of the diversity.

Nick and Lucas love climbing on logs and jumping off.

Quarter circle bridge.  You can drive across this, but I was too chicken to do it.  The river is deep, and close to the bottom of the bridge, and there isn't any sort of side rail.  It kind of freaked me out a bit.  But it was very pretty to look at, from the dry, safe ground.

Then we walked out on it.  I almost had an anxiety attack with the kids backed up to the edge like this for the picture.  One false move and the fall into the water.  And my kids, like most their age, just sink.  Scary.  But again, it was super pretty.

I don't think you can see it, unless you can zoom in on this picture, but this field is full of mules and horses that are working animals during the summer.  It is paradise, and they are all very happy animals.

I can't believe my little man is THREE years old.  He is such a cuddly lovey kid.  He still has baby cheeks and extra soft baby skin.  He has decided to potty train himself, so all week we have been wearing underwear during the day.  He gets upset when we stick a diaper on him at night, so we soften the blow by putting underwear over the diaper so that he still feels like a big boy.  He is having fairly frequent accidents, but that is because he won't go pee in the potty unless it is his idea.  But that is Nick.  He is very opinionated, and self assured.  These traits will serve him well if he can channel them in a productive way as an adult. 

He received a scooter for his birthday and practiced riding it today.  But he kept getting side tracked when he's see slugs or worms in the road, and decided that he needed to save all the animals.  So he picked up a stick and spent a long time moving all the worms and slugs out of the road.  I accidentally stepped on a worm (they are everywhere after all the rain) and he burst into tears and screamed and cried.  He is very attached to animals, although we are still working on empathy.  It will come later when he is older.