Happy 4th Birthday Ryan

I can't believe that he is already 4 years old! I still can remember so clearly when the nurses were weighing him when he first came out and said, "Oh look! How cute! He has dimples!". And, what a charmer he is with those dimples - Ryan can just melt my heart with them.

The night before his birthday, I decided to make things a little more exciting for him by blowing up a ton of red and blue balloons and putting them all over his bedroom floor for him to wake up to. It was so fun to hear the boys wake up that morning and their squeals of delight at the balloons. Most of the time the kids are less than thrilled to wake up for school, but those balloons made everything different. Jared said while still laying in bed that morning, "We should put balloons on their bedroom floor every morning!" If only it were that easy.

Ryan had requested for his birthday that he go to Build-A-Bear at our local mall and make a "dog just like Dallin's". He had seen Dallin loving his dog he got one year for his birthday and had walked past that store a number of times over the years and decided that he wanted that for his special activity for his birthday. So, we kept things pretty low key this year and went to Build-A-Bear in the afternoon and came home to have a family party. I asked Ryan what he wanted for his special birthday dinner and his request was - soup. Julia and Dallin couldn't believe their ears when he said he wanted soup for his birthday and kept suggesting their favorite dinners of pizza or orange chicken, but he kept firm in his request. So luckily I had discovered some (amazing better than homemade chicken noodle) soup from the deli section in Costco that we all loved and had that for dinner. That made things much easier because we were still having to deal with homework, soccer games and making a Lightening McQueen birthday cake all that afternoon.

Overall, I think that Ryan had a great day, but he is already making plans for his next - oh boy!