Cowen Turned Nine!!

In the midst of everything, Cowen had a birthday.  My green-eyed boy is nine.  He just keeps growing no matter how many times I tell him to knock it off.

Grandma Rasmussen sent him some binoculars and a tool box.  Cowen has been watching birds out the window with them, which is awesome because Grandma Rasmussen likes to watch birds out her windows as well.

Oskar--you are just too cute.

Tool box.

Remote-controlled car.  Cowen was pretty excited about that.  So was Timothy.  Timothy had to buy himself one and then a different one from DI to use the parts to improve his and Cowen's cars.

Oskar.

Car.

Boys and car.

Tipping the car over by building little jump thingys for it to go over.  At one point they tried to make the car run over my books.  I think not.  We had a little lesson on important things (books) vs unimportant things (jumping cars).  I don't think they believed me but they left my books alone thereafter.  :)

I don't have a pic of Cowen's cake because it didn't turn out well as I was pretty busy around then.  He wanted shake and bake chicken (of course) and coffee cake for dessert.  He wanted a fort made of candy on top of his coffee cake, so basically I just gave the kids candy along with their cake.  Nobody seemed to mind, least of all Cowen.

Cowen's Favorites:

Song: Army of Helaman
Color: red, black, and blue
Activity: play games
School Subject: history--ancient Romans
Book: fantasy (none in particular)
Chore: wash dishes
Person: Anders (and Isaac and Chad and Nash, his mom (yes, I had to prompt him on that last one))

On Thursday I picked up the kids from school (they go once a week to a charter school) and started chatting with two of Cowen's teachers.  They said that Cowen was one of the most helpful kids in school and consistently asks what he can do to help and cleans up and carries things for them all the time.  Awesome.

I love my green-eyed boy.

PS  The teachers also have Emeline and Miriam in some of their classes.  They said that Emeline is always happy and a joy to be around because of her enthusiasm.  Basically she's just like how she is at home.  They said that Miriam is the most creative child they had ever met (yep) and very logical in how she thinks through things.  So fun for me to hear such great things about my kiddos!