Birthday Kids

This last week we celebrated the birthdays of Jonah and Celeste. What great kids these guys are!
I love this photo of Jonah. It's one of his classic goofy expressions. In our family photo shoot back in October, all of his photos except for one had these random expressions.
Jonah is now 11. He's quite the kid. Given us a run for our money for sure. We have been so happy with him and all he's been doing. He has been in a robotics club for about the past 5 months. He loves it! They build robots together and program them to be able to accomplish certain missions. It's way nerdy, but in a cool kind of way.
This kid is smart and funny. He loves writing wacky letters to companies. He has a scrapbook of the letters he has received back. These letters are hilarious; both the letters out and response ones. He likes drawing cartoons and building crap out of crap. He is a good boy too. He loves his family and is especially sweet and tender with his baby sister and with me. I love when he will come up to me and out of the blue just say "Mom, I love you." He's very protective of his baby sister and likes to take good care of her and make her happy.
For his birthday I let him skip school. (Against Steve's opinion that kids should not be missing school, even on their birthdays. What's your opinion on that btw?) He and I had a nice day together. We went out to lunch and shopping to spend his birthday money. For dinner that night I served his request: corndogs and brownies. Not that most of us could gag down the corndogs, but they were served and served on the nice dishes, in honor of him. It was a good day.
Celeste turned 12 this week. She is also a really special child. We love and enjoy her in many ways. She is very mature in some ways and has a good mind. She likes to set goals. And she sets really good goals. She tries hard and likes to do a good job at everything she does. She likes to help. She cannot wait to grow up and be a mom and wife. I have to tell her all the time to try and enjoy being a kid while she can. But she loves to dream and look to the future all the time. She loves reading and writing. She loves all kinds of books and loves learning in general. She knows the Bible unusually well. She studies her scriptures and loves them. She's a good girl. All she wanted for her birthday was to do two things. 1- Go to the temple and 2- Go to the Family History Library. The only gift request I got from her was those two things and a new journal because all of her others are filled.
This was the year that she had the option to have friend party. But she really didn't want one. Which I was actually sad about. Instead we have a little trip planned for just me and her. We are going to Salt Lake this weekend and staying the night there together. We are going to go the Salt Lake Temple together to do baptisms and we also plan to spend hours together in that Family History Museum.
On the day of her birthday I let her skip school too. Steve and I took her out to dinner in our Temple cafeteria, then we did baptisms. Celeste was baptized on behalf of Andy's sister who died when she was 15, his mother, his grandmother and great grandmother as well as Hana's mother. Steve did the male counterparts. It was an incredibly special night and she was thrilled for the experience!
Happy Birthday to Jonah and Celeste! We love you so much!