Obsessed...

As I'm sure you know if you've read my blog, or if you've met Andrew, he is just a teensy bit completely obsessed with fire trucks. It all started when he dressed as a fire fighter for Halloween 2012. (He didn't really understand Halloween at that point, and had requested to be a princess... haha.) He liked it, but still wasn't all that into fire fighters and trucks and all that. For his birthday, I knew he liked the color red, and so I was thinking of a red theme, which then morphed into a fire truck/fire fighter party. He loved the party, and his love for fire trucks grew. Now he is full-on obsessed with all things fire trucks.
As I've said before, it doesn't matter the question, the answer is always "fire trucks". We have this conversation daily:
Me: What did you do in school today, Andrew?
A: Fire trucks!
Me: What did you read about?
A: Fire trucks!
Me: What station did you go to? What something that made you laugh? (Insert any other open-ended question about school...)
A: (You guessed it) Fire trucks!

When we bought our Elf on the Shelf, I was reading about it and noticed that the child gets to name the elf. I remarked to Jonathan, what do you want to bet that our Elf is going to be named 'Fire Truck'?! Haha! Now, let me introduce...

Fire Fighter

Our Elf, named Fire Fighter (also sometimes called Fire Fighter D(??) or Fire Fighter Eagle(the Elf at their school is named Eagle)). This was only after I convinced Andrew that 'Fire Department' wasn't really a very good elf name. I guess he is wearing red, so it's somewhat appropriate?!

Andrew's obsession has also gone over into his attire. Jackets, shirts, and shoes are all more favorable to him if they are red (and can therefore be associated with fire fighters). He also has fire truck pajamas, and will often sleep with his fire hat right next to his pillow, to be put on first thing in the morning.

Not a great picture, but it's hard to catch him!

Christmas was good for his obsession! I couldn't think of great things to put in his stocking, so I literally bought every small fire truck I could find to put in there. We were also lucky enough to find a small model of an airport fire truck (the Striker). Andrew loves to watch a promotional video on YouTube about the Oshkosh Striker. He recognized it right away and has been excited about it ever since. Jonathan got some of them out to do a "family" picture of his fire trucks. This isn't even a complete picture because he got one more big fire truck from Uncle Shawn and Aunt Kacie later in the day. I'm also pretty sure that there's probably a few dozen more small ones floating around his room. What a lucky fire-truck-loving boy!