Andrew: Four

 Happy 4th Birthday Andrew John Nullmeyer!

How is my baby 4 years old?? Andrew, you are such a loud, stubborn, hilarious, dramatic, fun-loving, naughty little addition to our family. You keep us all on our toes (and take after your brothers a lot!)

During a typical day, while your siblings are doing schoolwork, you are often enjoying activities like flooding the bathroom, cutting open packages of cookies with scissors, or dumping out 5,000 legos. You are an extremely curious and active guy. No sitting still learning how to hold a crayon....you've got bigger things to do....and say! 

You are a huge talker. You basically never stop talking, and the kids get really frustrated when they just need a minute of quiet. But your verbal skills are pretty amazing, and you say the funniest things. Your current favorite activity is to stand in the playroom window upstairs and shout things out the window at the neighborhood kids. You love reciting lines from the movie Home Alone.

When I asked you what you want for your birthday, your response was "I want a gun that shoots all the way to Australia!"

A phrase we often say is "Where's Andrew??"  I am constantly losing you because you like to wander off or intentionally hide from me. You love playing with your siblings and the older neighborhood kids. You ride your bike around with them and act like you're 5 years older than you are. You also love to disappear down the street without telling me, which gives me major anxiety on a daily basis.

You are a good eater, and you eat far more variety than your big brothers. While you do enjoy sneaking treats, you will also happily eat brussels sprouts, broccoli and asparagus served at dinner. You will happily scarf down 2 eggs, a smoothie, and sausage first thing in the morning. 

Unfortunately, you have un-potty-trained yourself. You were totally trained at day and night, and then you started having accidents, and now you basically pee through 5-10 outfits a day. You're back in pull-ups and I have no idea how we got here. I'm sick of all the extra laundry, that's for sure!

You are known around here as a major drink stealer. If someone sets their cup down, you will find it and drink out of it. Everyone yells at you about this, but you gleefully continue to taste everyone's drinks on a daily basis. Also, you look totally like your big brother Ryan in this picture!!

Andrew, you are my air-guitar-playing, hot-wheel toting, co-sleeping, possibly left-handed, candy-hiding, Chris Stapleton-singing, absolutely loveable Mama's Boy. 

We all love you so very much, and can't wait to see what life is like for you as a big 4 year old!

Valentine's Day 2021

 This was the kids' first Valentine's Day not being in a public school setting, so I made sure to put together some goody bags for them to wake up to!

We got ready for online church, and I tried to curl my hair. This is something I do maybe once a year, because it takes so dang long! I tried to snap a nice picture with my valentine.....

And this happened.

There was an abundance of sugar in our house this weekend. Girl Scout Cookies just came in, and then we made raspberry cupcakes. This was a recipe from the book series we just finished reading, and loved! Freddie's Amazing Bakery: Usborne Books & More. The Great Raspberry Mix-up (myubam.com)

Adam surprised me with a casting kit to mold the shape of our hands together. We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting Grandma Jan, followed by a quick stop to deliver cupcakes to my parents.

Adam gave me these pretty yellow and purple flowers. 

There were so many I needed 2 vases!

We ended the day getting takeout from Lazy Dog and watching I Love Lucy for the first time with the kids. We watched 2 episodes and they are hooked.....this makes me so happy!

Snow Day

Earlier this week we took a day trip to the snow! We had planned on renting a cabin for a few days, but with everything covid-related going on, we ultimately decided just to make it a day trip. Luckily for us, the snow is just an hour away right now.

It was SO cold when we got out of the car at Soda Springs Mountain Resort. The temps were in the high 20's I believe, which is really cold for us!

I was surprised by how empty it was! They are operating at half capacity right now, which still means up to 1800 people can be there at once. On Thursday when we were there, it was at 200 people, including staff. We didn't have to wait in line for anything!

We hopped a ride on a jeep that took us to the Planet Kids area. The kids rode on this tube carousel, even though my 10 yr old (and probably 8 yr old) were too big for it.

They had a snow mountain to climb and slide down.

The snow was so fresh and powdery that we sunk......a lot!

Some of us tried out the main tubing area.

The views were gorgeous at the top of the hill.

After a while Andrew was cranky because his socks and sweater were soaked. Actually all the kids were kind of having a hard time with the wet and cold.....so we decided to regroup.

We sat in the car and ate lunch while we defrosted.

Cookies helped our moods.

Andrew didn't want to go back out in the snow, so Adam volunteered to stay with him in the car. I headed back out with the 3 big kids, and this ended up being my favorite part of our day.

First we went back to the kids' area and tried out snowboarding. Jenna was so good at it! The boys quit after a while but she kept trying.

Then we took the jeep ride back to the big tubing hill. SO much fun without my (precious) whiny 3-yr old. Ha!

We basically had this hill to ourselves. It was glorious.

I found the boys doing this....."hockey fighting". Gee, wonder where they learned this?

I tried to snap a few photos.....

And got pelted with snowballs!

At this point the snow park was closing and were told to leave. We definitely wanted to stay longer and keep playing!

We had a hard time getting Ryan in the car. He wanted to stay and keep playing, but everyone was in the car and ready to go. He begged to come back the next day. Hopefully we can plan more snow time for next year!

Ahhh the sign of a good day. 4 sleeping kids on the way home!