Joshua Is 7 Now

My biggest boy is 7 years old already (as of June 25th). Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that we have a 2nd grader now, but we do! And he is such an incredible 2nd grader at that. It's hard to know where to even start to describe my Joshua. First of all, talking to him is like talking to a little adult. People always comment on his verbosity and ability to carry on a conversation. Even here in a foreign country he'll monologue to people who have no clue what he is saying. It can be humorous at times. :-) Joshua is very smart and can solve incredible math problems that 7 year old's are not supposed to be able to figure out. He's always had a bent toward math, so that's fun for me since I was a math major in college. He's been reading well for a while now, but lately he's been reading more and more by himself. For a long time he would only read out loud if he was actually reading a book (as opposed to just looking at the pictures and skimming familiar words), but now I can tell he's actually reading everything and he's spending more time with books in his hands regularly. He was most excited to receive his new "real" Bible, the first real Bible he's ever owned, for his birthday. He's totally into looking up verses and stories and reading them for himself. What's In the Bible is a series of DVD's put out by Phil Vischer (of Veggie Tales) that the boy's love. Joshua can pretty much quote an incredible amount of information that he's learned from these DVD's. It's awesome, really. I'm still amazed at what Joshua remembers and can recall with incredible clarity. Lately he's been into making recordings of things whether it's quoting information about the Bible or recording one of his rescue missions. He loves leading his brothers (or anyone else who will follow him) on rescue missions to save people from the volcano, hurricane, earthquake, etc. Rescue Heroes was his theme for his birthday and it was perfect for him right now. We gave him the Rescue Heroes Movie just for the occasion and he has literally watched it every day for at least 2 weeks. Saying he loves the movie would be a major understatement. When he takes a break from rescuing the world, he also loves drawing things, especially in his doodling book. No matter what Joshua is doing, whenever he is doing it he is totally focused and intensely into it. He is not to be deterred when he has his mind set on something. He is our intelligent, silly, intense, fun-loving, imaginative 7 year old and we love him so very much.

Birthday donuts!

The day of Joshua's birthday was a fun day. We went to a new local "fun place" that turned out to be really cool. The boys played in an indoor play place for over an hour then Joshua and Luke climbed up this tower thing. Then Joshua got in the bungy strap and jumped on this giant trampoline. He went up really high, but was very brave. He seemed to really like it! After that Joshua wanted to eat Dairy Queen hot dogs for lunch. That night we had taco jiaozi (dumpling wrappers stuffed with taco meat and cheese then fried) for supper. We had four friends who have been here just for the summer who came to join us for the yummy supper.


About 10 days before Joshua's actual birthday, we had a party with all of his friends. We had it early because all of the friends were leaving for the U.S. before his birthday. It was really important to Joshua to have everyone on his "list" to come to his birthday party, so we decided to have the party early for him. His awesome Grandmother sent some great things for the party, and the four summer friends helped make it a great party. They helped decorate (including making the "fire" for the cake to be set on) and helped with the game ideas as well.

These are the sticker badges that Grandmother sent for everyone to wear to the party. She also sent fireman hats for all the kids.

The kids had a great time playing rescue hero games like using flashlights to search for the hidden stuffed animals in the dark room. Then they formed teams to follow the clues to find the man trapped in the burning building. See below for a picture of one of the teams reading their clues. The last game was to assist the Rescue Hero astronaut, Roger Houston, in protecting the earth from the meteor shower by keeping the balloons from touching the floor. What ensued was 8 children under the age of 7 having the time of their lives together in my living room. It really was a fun party.

I spent most of the day making the fire truck cake for this party. It was my first time to use fondant and I don't know if I'll ever use it again! It was not easy, but I was very pleased with the final product. Here is Aunt Stacey assisting me via Skype when I was afraid all was lost and the cake was falling apart. :-) Thanks, Stac, for helping me and building my confidence in my cake decorating skills!

This is the fire that the four summer friends decorated for us. It really made the cake look cool. The figures around the cake are actually all Billy Blazes, the Rescue Heroes fireman.

Happy Birthday, my terrific Joshua. I'm so glad that you were born and that God has blessed our family with you!