Early birthday SURPRISE!

Ethan has been eying a red-eared slider turtle. He sees it every time we go to Petsmart for Brenna to pick a little something up for her hamster.

Right before dinner tonight, I was browsing through some facebook posts and saw that a girl from our church posted that she was looking for a new home for her red-eared slider turtle and that it was FREE and included everything needed to care for it. I could not believe it. I immediately called Jason over and we did a little chatting, trying to not let the kids hear what we were discussing. I went to our room, so the kids couldn't hear me, and called the family to get a little more information. They gave me the run down on the care and I told them I would call back in a few minutes. Jason and I chatted a little more and decided that we would head out to look at the turtle. We finished dinner and loaded the kids, they had no idea where we were going.

Once we arrived at the families' home, Jason and I went upstairs to see the turtle. After a few minutes, we decided that it was a definite go and we went down to get Ethan. We took him up alone so that we could give him is early birthday present. He was in complete shock. In fact, he was in such shock that there really was no facial expression from him. He just kept saying, "cool". I don't think he really believed that he was going to be taking the turtle home with him.

Once he finally realized that the turtle was really going home with us, he was excited to show his sisters.

He just sat and stared at the turtle for more than half way home...

when he finally announced, "Mom, I have the perfect name. I'm going to name him Jack!" We were so proud of him for coming up with a name all on his own. I loved that he took this so serious and really just took it all in. After the name announcement, he gave me a thumbs up! He was absolutely thrilled and couldn't wait to get Jack home and settled.

Tomorrow we will make a trip to Petsmart to get some water purifying solution...thank you City of Lynden for putting chlorine in our water. Thankfully he had enough water in his tank to get us through the night. I'm sure Jack will be thrilled to have a full tank of water tomorrow and Ethan can't wait to watch Jack be able to do lots of swimming.

I love how pretty his shell looks!