Chase is 8

That's right 8 years ago I gave birth to a 7 lbs. 11 oz. baby boy. He has grown so fast. When did the tantrums stop, when did he stop asking for his bum to be wiped, when did he learn to not only take his own baths but start showering too...all of those things that were an everyday occurrence and most of the time seemed a burden to me, are all gone now. I find myself sometimes thinking that I should have slowed down and enjoyed them more. Don't get me wrong Chase still needs a lot of help with some of the most simply things, pouring juice, matching clothes, and lets not forget cleaning the cat box. Which apparently if the cat poop is not in the box then its clean, doesn't matter what the floor around the cat box looks like. But, for the most part Chase has grown into a wonderful helper, amazing son, and even if Shilo wont agree out loud, an awesome little brother.

For Chase's birthday, he decided last summer that he wanted an outdoors party. However I kept explaining to him that someone who has a birthday in December cant be outdoors for his party. After many many months of trying to explain to him it would be too cold. He simply said "Mom there are plenty of things to do outside with snow on the ground. What do you hibernate all winter like some kind of bear?" Touche my little son touche. From that time on we decided that Chase would have a sledding party. It would be fun all the little boys would show up in the winter warmies and we could sled, build snowmen, and have snowball fights. Then retire to the house with a warm fire and hot cocoa right?....WRONG!!! Have you looked outside? Where the heck is all of the snow?

Well, waiting up until the week before his birthday for that big snow storm, we finally decided that sledding wouldn't happen. So then came the idea for ice skating. And what a wonderful idea it was. It just so happened that the Olympic Oval by our house was having there annual Holiday Festival on the same night we planned to have his party. So they offered free ice skating, games, bounce houses, Santa and entertainment. We had the boys meet at our house to open gifts, have pizza and cake, and play a bit. Then we headed for the rink. After standing in line for almost two hours we finally had our skates and were ready to play. One of Chase's friends plays on a hockey league and so had his own skates and could literally skate circles around all of us. But he was patient with all of us and we all seemed to pick it up eventually. Chase started doing so well that he was falling down on purpose because it was more fun to fall and make everyone laugh then to actually skate fine. And of course Shilo put on her skates and began skating very well even holding my hand for me. She did forget to wear socks, because it was the first week in December with NO snow, so she wore slip on's. And she got some pretty bad blisters, but really didn't complain at all. All in all it was a good party and Chase had a blast.