Happy Birthday, Jake!

Jake turned six years old today. It's hard to believe that my oldest child is only two years away from being baptized- where has the time gone?

Here are six things I love about Jake:

1. Jake has beautiful blue eyes and an infectious smile. He is such a handsome little boy.

2. Jake gives the best reactions. When you find something he likes, no one gets more excited than he does!

3. Jake is very lovable. He loves it when I rub his head. If I stop, he puts my hand back on it so that I will keep doing it! He gives the best hugs and kisses.

4. Jake is very polite. He always uses please and thank you and even says excuse me when he burps!

5. Jake loves school. He is always excited to go and is very well behaved there. He loves positive praise and gets lots of it!

6. Jake tries really hard. As he is getting older he is becoming more aware of his challenges and he is trying really hard to compensate for them. I am so proud of all of the progress he has made this past year both academically and socially. I hope he has another great year!

Last Saturday we had a friend birthday party for him. This was the first time we invited who Jake wanted instead of all of our friends and their kids. A couple of his best friends from school came and then some of his cousins. Jake is still talking about his friends, Kevin and Michael, that came to his party. I think it meant a lot for him to know that they came just for him. He wanted an animal party so we put little animals on each of the cupcakes and decorated with animals everywhere.

I asked Jake what he wanted to do at the party and he said he wanted to do the waterslide. Excellent. So easy for me! I love this picture of all of them climbing up the slides.

Jake and his friend, Kevin.

Some of my family came to help out with the party. It was such a hot day that when the little kids got out to eat and open presents, everyone else got in to cool off a little (or at least their feet)!

Sunday we had my whole family over for dinner to celebrate all of the July birthdays. It was a little crazy having 30 people in our little house, but it was still fun. Abbey read Carli's spotlight for Jake which is always a highlight for everyone's birthdays.

All Jake kept saying he wanted for his birthday were animals and cars. So my parents got him two big tubs of animals and about 50 little cars with a case to put them all in. Jake loved it! He was so excited when he opened them!

Jake spent the rest of the night playing with all of his new toys.

Today was Jake's actual birthday. He started the day with his birthday balloons in bed (it's actually our bed since he came in and slept with us last night)!

Jake then went to school and I brought pencils and yogurt popsicles for his class at snack time. Jake was pretty excited to have his classmates sing to him and to have Nathan, Max and I there.

Tomorrow is Jake's last day of Summer School. This is his teacher, Ms. Geer. She is so nice and such a great teacher- I hope he gets to have her for a full school year.

Tonight we had pizza for dinner and then Jake opened up his presents. One of his favorite gifts was a bubble machine. It is so awesome- you just push the button and it blows out tons of bubbles! I'm not a big fan of standing there and blowing bubbles for them so this is the perfect solution!

We then played some games and sang to Jake for the third time! This was the first year that Jake has really gotten into his birthday. It was so fun to see him get excited about everything and actually have an opinion about what he wanted to do.

I love him so much and hope that he has another great year!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAKE!!!

Jake shares his birthday with my dad who turned 58 today! My mom and my siblings all surprised him and took him to Gandolfo's for lunch. They just opened Gandolfo's down here and Jon and I have already been there several times. It was one of our favorite places to eat in Provo and we were so excited when we heard it was coming down here. If you haven't been there- GO! You will love it. It was fun to spend a little bit of my dad's special day with him. He is the best dad and I hope he had a very Happy Birthday!!!