Happy 3rd Birthday Garrett!

Our little angel turned three today! It's hard to believe three years have passed since he joined our family.  I know kids just grow fast, plain and simple.  It seems harder to accept when it's my baby.

Here are a few things about Garrett at three years old:

1. He is very tender hearted.  He can dish it, but if he gets in trouble in any way, he is simply heart broken!
2.  He loves to be outside.  What boy doesn't? He especially loves to go to the school park and has known how to get directly there since before he turned two.
3. He always says thank you when I give him something or do something for him.  On that note, when I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, for instance throw a wrapper away to something he has eaten, he will calmly, quickly, and confidently respond, "No thank you."
4. He says, "I love ya!" to me at least once a day.
5. He loves to play with trains, watch shows about trains, and read books about trains.
6. He calls his sisters "his girls." When he's expecting them to come home from school and he hears the doorbell ring, he'll say, "My girls are home!"
7. He loves to go to grandma's house and asks me regularly if we can go there.  Last time I went to pick him up from Sue's he saw me come to the door and calmly said, "I don't want you."
8.  He could live on chocolate milk and uncrustables.  He's easily my most picky eater of the four.  It is rare for him to eat any dinner.  He's my only child who does not eat vegetables.  My girls have been eating broccoli and green beans since they were one.  Not Garrett.  He only likes kid food like macaroni and cheese, PB&J and tortillas with cheese.  He will eat apples and grapes.  He will eat pasta and cheeseburgers. Although he may not fill his belly often with actual meals, he eats enough peanut butter (which he calls peanut butter and jelly) by the spoonful to fulfill his daily calorie requirements.  Most mornings he sits on the counter with one of our old baby spoons and eats spoonful after spoonful of peanut butter.
9.  He loves to read books and is great at memorizing the pages.  I can start the sentence on a page of a familiar book and he can finish it without hesitation.
10.  He always has been and still is a celebrity at our house.  When he wakes up in the morning and shows up wherever we have congregated, we all shriek and gush with excitement to see him and spend another day with him. We are SO BLESSED to have Garrett in our family.

We had a little family pirate party for him on Sunday.  It was fun to have his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins over to celebrate!

This is the newest cousin, Gavin Ryser Johnson, born on March 9.  Brooke was in heaven holding him.

Opening a present from Ty and Ava.

He's handsome even with a dirty face!

And the most exciting present of all: A BIG BOY BIKE!!!

He was thrilled to ride up and down the sidewalk on his new blue bike.

My nephew Jonathan came to the party for a while after a long drive back from visiting his grandma in Idaho.  Anna loves to bother Jonathan! Fortunately, he puts up with it very patiently.