Keaton, this ones for you buddy!

You have the LUCKY privilege of being THE baby of our family! With that privilege came the added blessing of being moms personal buddy the longest! The older kids have been in school pretty much most of your life so there has been a lot of one on one time with mom that they did not get the advantage of!! I have THOROUGHLY enjoyed our time! You are so easy going, happy go lucky, it really doesn't matter what we do, you are almost always content and I can always count on you to behave!
This year should have probably been really hard sending you to kindergarten, being THE baby and all but truthfully I was so excited for you, it was hard to be sad. You have waited a long time to go to school with the big kids and were more than ready!! Your teacher tells me all the time what a good student you are and what a nice boy! (THANKS). We still get our one on one time from 2 to 3 and when the others are busy with activities. You have always made us laugh and make our hearts smile with all the sweet and funny things you say. I have never heard a little 5 year old boy give such thoughtful and sincere compliments. I love it!!!

Just for posterity's sake I want to record just a couple of my favorites lately.

1. ( you were born with the funniest double cowlick which unfortunately if your hair gets very long forces it to stand straight up in a mow hawk like fashion!!)
So we were all in moms bathroom getting ready for school and while I was doing the girls hair you say
K-" I kind of want to take scissors and cut this off"
M- "what? your hair?"
K- " ya, but the kids kind of think I'm cute"
M- what kids?
K -the girls friends
M- oh because of your hair?
K- ya kind of (in your shy I am to cute for words voice and that cute twinkle in your eye that tells me I am in for big trouble in a few years!!!
M-Thats because you are so cute!!
K- MOM!!!

I love how your little mind works!!

2. A couple weeks ago I took you with me to the laundry mat to wash all our big camping quilts. Again in some cases this could have been a total nightmare but with you, I hardly knew you were there. You brought a few of your cars and just played quietly in the chairs. You talked to your cars while you played (which I think is so dang cute) and helped me load and unload.
When we were about to leave, we had the most RANDOM conversation ever and my description will not do it justice without your sweet innocent voice and hand gestures, but its funny just the same!
You said to me "mom, there's something I really want to do. I want to go to a place with a whole bunch of water kind of like a lake (insert hand gestures), and a big bridge over it (more hand gestures) and I want to have dinner there like a picnic. But only if it's not hot!"
Where that came from I have no idea?
A few minutes later it got even MORE random, you said" the other day I was watching this thing about brain freezes. I'm not sure, I think they said if you wiggle your teeth it will make it go away? Not sure how we went from picnics at the lake to brain freezes but I was laughing!!

3. This one is funny to me because you were to little to have any memory of me working at the hospital. You have said to be a few times "mommy I really want you to be a nurse again" with no explanation. This was even before we had even started discussing me possibly going back! Guess you knew more than me?
When I finally made the decision that I wanted to go back to working as a nurse I thought it would be fun to see what you would have to say about it.
I said to you "Keaton, moms going to work at the hospital again but I REALLY need to practice starting IV's and giving shots. Can I practice on you?" With out even hesitating you enthusiastically said SURE!! A few minutes later you ran down stairs and announced to everyone that mom was going to practice IV and shots on you!!


We love you so much, you have been such a blessing to our family I can't even put it into words.
While sometimes I am sad that you have grown so fast, I get so excited to see what kind of man you will turn into. There is no doubt in our minds, you WILL be extraordinary!