Zeke Russell Is 10 Years Old!!!

Zeke Russell is now 10 years old! 

All my kids are double digits!!!

Let's see what Zeke has been up to for the last single digit year of his life! :) 

For his 9th birthday we had a small gathering with friends and family. It was nice low-key birthday which honestly is my favorite kind of party. After all those years of themes, it's been nice to dial it back a bit and just relax! 

This year for his 10th birthday we are going somewhere. We've done that for each of the kids 10th birthdays. Zeke really wants to go play mini golf. At first we were just going to go to the mini golf outside the Kent Icicle Arena, but then friends told us about Tower Lanes in Tacoma which has bowling and indoor mini golf. Zeke was wanting to bowl as well so this sounds perfect to us. As of writing this I'm still trying to figure out if they have a party time available that will work for us. If not we'll just head down and do the first come first serve thing. 

This boy loves chocolate cake and chocolate frosting...just another thing he has in common with his Daddy! 

Shortly after Zeke's birthday we finished up our first year of homeschooling. It's so crazy to think that Zeke only went public school for 2 full years. 

3rd grade is over...he's onto to 4th! 

Look at all those stars! Each star represents a PACE completed and a gold star means he scored a 100% on the test. Nice work Zekester! 

To celebrate the end of the school year we went camping during the first part of June. The weather was a bit schizophrenic, but that's wasn't going to keep the kids out of the pool. Unfortunately this was the first time the pool had been used in over a year and I think they overdid it a bit with the chlorine. All the kids skin ended up irritated and peeling. Oops! 

We are going camping again this year, but we decided to go later in June so hopefully the weather will be nicer! Also I'm going to bring Vaseline to slather the kids with after they get out of the pool!

The site where we camp is butted up against 4 tent sites. Those sites are rarely in use whenever we're there so we let the kids use that area as a putting green. Zeke somehow made a one in a lifetime shot and got his golfball stuck in a tree! 

The kids love to do egg drop challenges. They got through so much stuff...kleenex, cardboard, plastic bags, straws. You name it...they use it! Zeke was successful! 

Zeke is such a goofball. He's great at making silly faces! 

How is he only 9 years old here? He looks so little! 

In actuality Zeke probably isn't all that smaller than his siblings were, but his siblings have hit their growth spurs so it makes him seem smaller. Also he does fill that baby of the family role very well. 

Still a bit unsure about the sparklers...which frankly I don't blame him. They are a bit freaky to me too! 

I wasn't sure if Zeke would want to ride Ms. Melinda's horse Sedona, but he didn't seem to mind it. He's so little though his feet can't even reach all the way in the stirrups and she has them as short as they will go. 

This year Zeke has been more vocal about not wanting his hair cut as short as we have in the past. When we do cut his hair short it's so blond that he almost looks bald. When his hair is darker brown like it is in the picture above it's really long! His hair is also so bizarre because it plasters itself to his head. Cutting it is a complete nightmare! So I guess it's good he likes it longer! 

Once we got the A-OK from Lighthouse Christian Academy that the kids work for the school year was processed we were able to recycle all the PACE's they completed. This was all the work at Zeke did during his 3rd grade year! That's a heavy load! 

During our camping trip down at Long Beach last August, Zeke could have spent hours at the beach digging in the sand and chasing seagulls! Also I totally agree with his shirts! 

Second year of homeschooling...onto 4th grade!!! 

2030 will be here in a flash! 

I had thought originally that the kids might move desks every year just to have a change, but they all really like where they sit so I think it's just going to stay the way it is. Zeke has done well during this 4th grade year. He has had a bit of a hard time keeping his focus on his work. Somedays he would be the last kid finished with his work which is really ridiculous since his work isn't all that hard and he doesn't have to do as many pages as his older siblings. Overall grade wise he's done very well though! 

Getting the kids ready for out long road trip involved taking a few hikes. Zeke loves to go down by the water and he's all about crossing or jumping over logs. 

The night before we left for our road trip Zeke and Ella had a surprise for me with their stuffies. 

Their stuffies threw me a Birthday party. It was so cute! They had a sign up for me that said "Love you Mom!" 

They even had paper instruments for their stuffies so they could sing Happy Birthday to me. 

Also the stuffies had signs to convey their messages to me. So clever and adorable! 

Our road trip was so awesome and Zeke great! It was a little hot in Arches and he didn't really like that too much, but the neck fans I bought came in handy. 

It was fun getting to go out to eat every night for dinner on our vacation. We don't go out to eat all that often at home. It was fun to see what the kids would order. Zeke's most commonly ordered foods were a corn dog, chicken nuggets/strips or mac n' cheese. 

He's still most definitely my pickiest eater. He will try thing, but if he doesn't like it he quite frequently just refuses to finish dinner. It is what it is and one day he'll realize that food is good! 

The Grand Canyon was most definitely a highlight of our trip! In regards to Zeke though I felt like we were constantly trying to keep him alive! He's not super aware of where he is most of the time and so when we were walking where there wasn't railings it was a bit nerve-wracking .

For the trip we gave each of the kids $50 to spend on trinkets. Of course Zeke chose another stuffie...a deer...he named it Dawn. 

When we were trying to watch the sunset I practically had to sit down and hog tie Zeke. We were sitting on a huge rock to get a nice view. There was ground down below us and it extended for a bit. We weren't on the edge of a cliff or anything, but if he did fall he would have had a good chance of rolling or bouncing and that would have been really bad. So we forced him to sit on the rock and not get down. He was cold since we weren't letting him move around so he decided to tuck himself into his coat. 

In Las Vegas the kids had so much fun in the pool at our condo. 

I'm late to the fun video skills game. I just recently started doing the hyper lapse and the slow motion. It was fun capturing this slow-mo video of Zeke and Ella jumping through the waterfall! 

Sweet Zeke boy is so skinny that he usually ends up getting out the pool because he's freezing. Cutie doesn't have an ounce of fat on him! 

The most fun I had with Zeke on our trip was the Tree Top Tahoe course we did in the North Lake Tahoe area. It was a Zipline / Arial Course with 10 different runs. Zeke stayed with me for the first bit and we had so much fun together. 

I was sure he was going to be a little scared, but he wasn't at all. He did so great! I would go back to Lake Tahoe just to do this course again! 

During dinner at The Black Bear Diner, I think we must have started talking about Zeke's homemade snow globe where he purposefully put a Made In China sticker on his snowman....because he ended up writing Made In China on the napkin. Either that or we were referencing Covid! :) 

Taking the boat across Shasta Lake to see the Caverns! 

Zeke and Owen are the two kids that wear coats almost all the time. They are also the two skinniest kids in the family so that makes sense. 

For the most part you weren't able to touch the formations we saw in the caverns because the oils for your skin can mess them up. There was this one section though that you could touch...I don't even remember why now...but of course Zeke just had to touch it! 

When you're at Tillamook Cheese Factory you eat Mac 'n Cheese! Or if you're Zeke you order Mac 'n Cheese and then don't eat it because it doesn't taste like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese! This kid! 

Zeke had the best time on the beach in Seaside for the last little bit of our trip! He ran around collecting crab parts and then assemble them into a whole crab. He actually did so good he fooled the seagulls into thinking they had lucked out and gotten lunch. It was so hilarious! 

Time to say goodbye to the Power Wheels. Zeke did fine when it was time to sell them. Now that he's riding his bike he's fine having that as an option. Actually if he had to choose he'd probably still prefer to ride on his scooter most of the time. 

Papa & Ms. Ruth came over for dinner one night and I snapped this picture of them and Zeke. It's one of my favorite pictures! 

I always tell the kids they can have a pumpkin as long as they can carry it. If it's too heavy they have to put it back. Zeke was testing out pumpkin, but in the end he went with a white one instead of a traditional orange one.

This is how he felt about scraping out the guts though. There was NO WAY that was happening. In fact he ended up paying Ella to do it for him. 

That's a good looking pumpkin! 

Zeke had so much fun designing and making his homemade Halloween costume. He was his own made up character called Dark Arrow....it's a bad guy if you're wondering. In his words....he was a super villain! 

Zeke loves his new bed under Owen's. His new favorite thing to do right now is to climb up in Owen's bed so he can lean over and hug me. Then I can sing to him and scratch his back. He's always asking for more back scratches! Just the other day he told me he can't wait until Owen moves into the other room and then he's gonna move into Owen's bed. 

Saying goodbye to Lightning McQueen! 

Be still my heart! Look at this handsome guy! 

Although I was so super sad that we couldn't have pictures with Starr last year, I was super happy with the few I took at home! 

This silly guy likes to tuck his legs inside his coat. This particular time it looked like he had a body builders chest and no legs! 

His hair is so long here it almost looks like a toupee! :) 

See how blond he looks when we cut his hair! It's so crazy! 

My sweet Christmas boy wanted a picture next to the fun old truck! The kids always love getting pictures of old cars for Pa to see! 

The last time it snowed it was so nice because all I had to do was get out all the snow gear and then help a couple of kids with their gloves. It was so nice to not have to help each kiddo get fully dressed.

So proud of his KiwiCo creations! I will say if we do KiwiCo again I will sign Zeke up for the next crate...it's called the Tinker Crate. It's a little more STEM focused where the Doodle Crate that he gets now is a bit more craft orientated. He has been enjoying them though. 

Zeke was such a sweet help when we were getting Ella's room all ready. He helped me clean and polish Peepaw's old dresser for her. 

Zeke was such an amazing helper when we were at church stuffing the Easter Eggs and then again at the actually Easter Adventure when he was putting the eggs back together. 

Zeke is the most creative kid I know! He loves when we get shipments from Amazon or when Michael comes home with big sheets of paper. He's always using things like toilet paper rolls or tissue boxes. The kids honestly doesn't need many presents he needs rolls and rolls of masking tape and scotch tape. I'm always finding little bits of cardboard remnants from his creations. In the above picture he made a cowboy costume for my old teddy bear. My Brown Bear is over 40 years old. He loves to use the large pieces of paper to invent his own board games. These are usually hilarious board games that you most likely will never win. They always have spots where you land on them and go all the way back to start. It can be maddening and hilarious all at the same time. :)

Right now we are in the midst of a difficult time with trying to change a very ingrained, learned habit. The habit of baby talk. I did it when I was younger and I remember it being hard to stop. Owen struggled with it and so did Ella. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that Zeke is the baby of the family. We have tried a bunch of different things....saying we can't understand him and having him repeat what he said & telling him to speak in his big boy voice. It's really been frustrating for him and us. So the latest effort..which I hope will work...is taking away one of his stuffies when he talk in baby talk. The stuffies get put on top of the refrigerator and then every Sunday he gets them back. Oh man this is killing Zeke, but we've actually seen an improvement because those stuffies are important to him. Here's hoping that new habits will be developed and this will be a distant memory that we'll all laugh about one day! 

My sweet Zeke Man...

I can't believe you're ten years old. A whole decade since our family was made complete by you! You were honestly the most planned for kid. Yes, we planned and tried for Owen for YEARS before being blessed, but with you we talked and strategized about all possibilities. I had been on anti-depressants that I couldn't take while pregnant so we had to coordinate switching which ones I was on or going off them completely I can't honestly remember it's been so long. We also had a trip coming up the next year to Wyoming so we had to think...do we want to be traveling with a small infant? Do we want to wait and travel when I'm big and pregnant? Those all were factors in our decision to add to our family. Ultimately, we decided to defy my doctors orders and not wait until October to try because then we would have been traveling with a tiny baby and I would have still not felt 100% following my C-Section. I remember it so clearly, I told Daddy that either we got pregnant in September or he wasn't going to even touch until after the new year. So September it was and we were blessed to get pregnant with you in what we thought was our timing, but ultimately it was God's! 

God knew we needed a Zeke Russell Martin in our lives and I'm so happy he gave us you! I remember my whole pregnancy going back and forth between wanting a boy and then wanting a girl. I did the very same thing on the operating table while they were getting you out. I want a boy, I want girl....I want a boy, I want a girl. Back and forth and then at the last second I said...I hope it's a boy! Then Daddy got to say....IT'S A BOY!!! What joy! 

My sweet boy, I love you so much and I'm so thankfully for you...for your sweet smiles and giggles, for your gentle spirit, your kindness, compassion and concern for others. You are such a treasure! I pray that you will know the purpose that God has for you at an early age. That He will show you the Way and that you will follow Him all the days of your life. 

Happy Birthday my Sweet Zeke Man!