Colton Turns 8!

For Colton's 8th birthday, I decided to take it easy a bit, and I just hired a girl from our ward to come and do a Science themed birthday party for him and a few friends.  It turned out to be lots of fun!  It was nice to not have to prepare as much to entertain the kids myself and they all had fun with the activities!

At 8 years old Colton:

Loves-dinosaurs-especially raptors, legos, arts and crafts, gemstones and minerals, and anything to do with nature.

Does Not Like- tomato soup, siblings touching his stuff,

When He Grows Up- He wants to be an explorer

Favorites:

Food- pancakes
Treat- Crystal Rock Candy
Show- Wild Kratts
Hobby- Crafts
Sport- Soccer
Color- Blue

Colton is so creative and fun.  He is energetic and full of life.  He is incredibly smart and loves learning new things.  He has a kind heart and want to do nice things for other people.  We love him and are so glad he's in our family!

Summer Activities

This summer, we tried to keep it as simple as possible and not have the kids signed up for too many things all at once.  Still, we have four kids and we wanted them all to be involved in something, learn some skills, and each have some new experiences, so it ended up being busy anyway.

Colton:  Colton decided to try out Tae Kwon Do.  I think he liked it more than other sports he's done but he still didn't seem thrilled about going all of the time.  He also took swim lessons with Katie and, apart from the freezing water, seemed to enjoy it overall!  I signed him and Katie up for an art camp that went Tues/Thurs for an hour for a few weeks and that was by far his favorite summer activity!

Katie: Katie did both soccer and Tball.  She enjoyed both of them and did really well at both of them, but she seems to enjoy soccer a bit more.  She can get easily frustrated if she isn't getting the ball enough, or if her team is losing, or if she hasn't made any goals so we had to work on that a bit!  She did very well in swim lessons.  Katie is by far the strongest swimmer of the kids right now.  The swim lessons I signed them up for were way too easy for her, but she was a good sport and always did what she was asked, despite the freezing water.

Zach: Zach is a silly kid.  He is always wanting to be involved in stuff that the other kids are doing, but once I break down and sign him up, his motivation is not super high.  I signed him up for mini soccer and swim lessons and he didn't seem to really love either one.  In swim lessons, he thought the water was too cold and he refused to get in.  On the couple of days when the weather was a lot warmer, he didn't want to go in because he didn't want to listen to his teachers.  Who knows?  He always wanted to play in the splash pad next to the pool after swim lessons, even on the cold days, so I'm not sure it was the temperature.  I think he just wanted to be in the same group as Katie and Colton.  Soccer he enjoyed maybe 30% of the time, would participate with encouragement another 40% of the time, and 30% of the time didn't want to do at all.  He was quite upset that he wasn't old enough to do art camp with Katie and Colton.

Madi: Madi got to hang out with mom and just cheer lead all the other kids on in their activities!