Elias' Birthday Interview

Because I've never been good at only picking the best pictures to post, here are a whole bunch of pictures of Elias on his birthday.

 Happy Elias.

 Slightly smirking Elias.

 "I'm so cold."

 "I'm 4...see it even says so on my shirt."

 Jumping.

 Serious (and seriously cute).

 Grrr.

 This face makes me giggle.

 Hey, look, he's four on a slide.

 Posing in the leaves.

 Doesn't he look relaxed?

 We have a picture of Asher on his fourth birthday doing almost the EXACT same thing.  Check it out; it's the second from the last picture in the post.

 Did we mention he's four?

And we'll end with a picture with his Momma and his interview.  Enjoy!!

Elias' Birthday Interview: Age 4
What is your favorite color? orange
Who is your best friend? Tommy…and Courtney
What is your favorite TV show/movie? Dinosaur Train
What is your favorite thing to do outside? play
What is your favorite thing to do inside? play (I see a trend)
What is your favorite game? hide & seek
What is your favorite thing to wear? my Superman jacket
If we were to go on vacation, where would you want to go? to Grandma & Grandpa’s that have Belle
What do you like most about your siblings?
Asher – I like to play with him super duper much
Addilyn - play
Albert - …I don’t know
Now that you're 4, what do you want to know/learn? I like songs…to drum 
What do you want to be when you grow up? a dad who plays drums in a band
What is your favorite toy? superman glider
What do you sleep with? Rawr and Seal
What is your favorite thing to do as a family? play games like hide & seek
What is your favorite art project? painting
What is your favorite cereal? Life
What is your favorite lunch? sandwiches  - not pumpkin bread, just peanut butter and jelly
What is your favorite dinner? tacos
What is your favorite snack? fruit snacks
What is your favorite dessert? cookies
What is your favorite drink? juice...yummy, nummy juice!
What is your favorite animal? Rawr and Seal (his stuffed polar bear and seal)
What is your favorite song? Hark the Herald
What is your favorite book? library books
What is your favorite holiday? Halloween

Elias' Birthday

Saturday was Elias' birthday.  It started as all birthdays should, with a ginormous silly straw and some super sugary cereal (Count Chocula)!

He must have slept good; look how puffy those eyes are (and how happy that kid is; he woke up super duper happy)!

And guess how old he is.  4? You guessed it!

Opening a present.

He was pretty excited about that Star Wars LEGO.

 Laying it out with Daddy.

Daddy making sure that Asher doesn't jump right in there and start helping.

This boy is actually really good at following the directions and putting together LEGO.  He is definitely the best of our kids at this age.

 His audience whilst assembling.

For his birthday dinner, he requested tacos (actually he requested cake.  Then, after I explained that we would have cake after dinner, he requested "toties".  It was only after I explained that cake and cookies were both desserts and that I was looking for a dinner food that he settled on tacos).  For his cake, I made pumpkin spice cupcakes with cookie butter buttercream from this website.  So yummy.

All lit up.

 Enjoying licking the frosting off the candles.

We had some guests for dinner to help celebrate.  Per Elias' request, we invited Colin and Mary. "Tolin" is definitely one of Elias' favorite people in the world right now.

Asher couldn't have the cupcakes because of egg but he could have the frosting so I made him a pumpkin cookie sandwich with the absolutely awesome cookie butter buttercream.

Colin and Mary even gave Elias gifts.  Colin's may have involved a shampoo bottled filled with nickels and dimes.  They also gave some pretty exciting Hot Wheel car set ups.  One involves a ramp for the tub (which has already been deemed a hit).

All in all, it was a pretty great day for all.

Wrapping up Chicago: Part 3

Group pic.  

I started this post well over a week ago; let's see if I can finally get it done.

As we were packing up, we decided to escape the mess in a truly epic way.  We made our own drive-in movie.  We thought the LEGO movie would be a good subject for all the awesomeness.

Here's the sideview, for some perspective.

Fully immersed in the LEGOocity.

In preparing to pack up all we own, we had to dig out all the boxes we'd been saving.

It was a bit precarious to get them all out.  You wont' be surprised to note that we had more than enough boxes for all of our things; although, depressingly, not way more.

Our friend, Julie, introduced the kids to some different artistic mediums.  Addilyn was drawing a cherry with charcoal.

Elias was experimenting with paint.

Asher experimented with paint as well.  And look, there's Julie.  Thank, Julie, for letting the kids play and explore with you!

In our last week, we had to go to one more Cubs game.

Elias was pretty entranced.

Me and my girl.

Our view(well, specifically Elias').

Albert was pretty active throughout.  He certainly kept us entertained during the slow parts.

And look, they won!

Group pic.  And fun was had by all!