Addilyn's Birthday Interview

Time for Addilyn's birthday pictures!

Hey look, some dogs!

Standard pose and picture smile.

10!

She's so proud to be in the double digits!

Angry/pouty face.

Emoticon face.

Addilyn: Age 10

What is your favorite color? light blue
Who is your best friend? Kylie
What is your favorite TV show/movie? Hugo
What is your favorite thing to do outdoors? get all dirty
What is your favorite thing to do indoors? art
What is your favorite game? Clue
What is your favorite thing to wear? a dress
Where would you want to go on vacation? New York City
What do you like most about your brothers? they are kind and usually respectful

Albert: he's caring and loves to give me hugs

Elias: he loves to play with me and is really nice

Asher: he's good at creating Lego structures for my Lego people

Now that you're nine, what would like to learn/know? more about science; chemistry
What do you what to be when you grow up? a science teacher
What is your favorite toy? Cornelius
What do you sleep with at night? Cornelius, Brownie and my blanket
What is your favorite things to do as a family? go on long trips and bike rides
What is your favorite art project? the soil conservation posters
What is your favorite subject in school? art or science
What is your favorite cereal? Fruity Pebbles
What is your favorite lunch? Nutella and peanut butter sandwich
What is your favorite dinner? Korean beef
What is your favorite snack? bananas and peanut butter with chocolate chips on top
What is your favorite dessert? ice cream with a brownie
What is your favorite drink? Pepsi
What is your favorite animal? giraffe
What is your favorite song? Cool Kids (by Echosmith)
What is your favorite book? Flora and Ulysses
What is your favorite holiday? Christmas

If you want to compare to her previous interviews, here are the links:

2016

2015

2014 

2013

Addilyn, at 10.

Dabbing.

Superhero Addilyn.

Addilyn's Birthday

Addilyn turned 10!! The night before she made monster cookie bars to share with her class as a birthday treat. Yum!

This year she got two number shirts! One of them uses the Roman numeral for 10 because she knows Roman numerals and sewing an X is really easy.

Fruity Pebbles is a great way to start a birthday!

Opening one present before school.

And off to school she goes!!

The traditional picture with Mom on her birthday!

School got out early so we headed out for an adventure!!

Chipotle!!

Chipotle with Aunt Courtney!! For her tenth birthday, she and Oliver got to go hang out with Aunt Courtney for a special birthday weekend. We met Courtney halfway for the hand off.

Opening more presents. Albert picked out the boys' gift to Addilyn which, of course, was LEGO!

Addilyn got an adult journal. She writes us notes almost every night so we thought it would be a good idea to get those notes collected in one place.

Books!

We finished the day with a special trip to Cold Stone Creamery where Addilyn got her very own ice cream! It was a pretty awesome day (followed by an equally awesome weekend but I don't have pictures of that.)

Albert's Birthday Interview

Albert turned 4 and, as is our tradition, we document this milestone by asking him lots of questions and taking too many pictures of him. This the traditional staged smiley photo.

This is his somewhat fierce face.

This is his very fierce face.

He's trying to be sad but it's not working for him.

Happy/yelling face.

Scary, showing-us-all-his-teeth face.

Cheese face.

Albert: Age 4

What is your favorite color? yellow
Who is your best friend? Elias
What is your favorite TV show/movie? Dinosaur Train/Cars
What is your favorite thing to do outdoors? play in the snow
What is your favorite thing to do indoors? play with my service station
What is your favorite game? Connect Four
What is your favorite thing to wear? these pants and my 4 shirt!
Where would you want to go on vacation? Grandpa and Grandma B's because they have Mouse Trap
What do you like most about your siblings? Addilyn - she tells me things when I'm sad
Asher - when he reads me the steam shovel book (Mike Mulligan and the Steam shovel)
Elias - I like when he comes and says 'What are you doing?'
Now that you're four, what would you like to learn/know? how to get the LEGO bucket down from very high
What do you want to be when you grow up? have a combine...a farmer
What is your favorite toy? service station
What do you sleep with at night? monkey and blue blanket
What is your favorite thing to do as a family? go on vacation

What is your favorite art project? building a snowman (out of foam at Story Hour)
What is your favorite thing to learn about? Advent
What is your favorite cereal? Lucky Charms
What is your favorite lunch? Peanut butter (just peanut butter!) sandwich
What is your favorite dinner? pizza
What is your favorite snack? fruit snacks
What is your favorite dessert? brownies...the dry ones, not the wet (????)
What is your favorite drink? water and juice
What is your favorite animal? all 
What is your favorite song? Hark the Herald
What is your favorite book? steam shovel (Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel)
What is your favorite holiday? Easter

He's just so nervous!!

Cheese bucket.

More cheese bucket. Only this one looks like he's trying to convince you to give him part of your dessert.

"What to choose...what to choose?" 

Fiercely pondering.

Feeling forlorn.

Happy birthday, big boy!!

For posterity and because our kids love to see themselves in videos, here are more questions for Albert on his birthday.

Albert Turns 4!!

Sunday Albert turned 4!! It was ridiculously cold (the temp. when we woke up with -22F!) so church was cancelled. That meant that we all got to "sleep in." More accurately it could be known as "huddling for warmth under our covers." Nonetheless, it was nice.

For Albert's birthday cereal, he requested Fruity Pebbles because it was something that Addilyn could eat too. Isn't he sweet?!!

The new '4' shirt!!

Happy boy opening a card.

Like most birthdays, Albert got to open a gift in the morning. He was pretty excited!

The entire crew was pretty enraptured as Daddy gave them an overview of how this particular toy works.

We then let Albert bring his new toy over to the church where we hung out for a while just in case someone didn't get the news that church had been cancelled. We brought a board game to play with the adventurous soul(s) but luckily, our communication protocol seemed to be efficient and no one showed up. After that, we came home, ate lunch, and let Albert open the rest of his gifts.

Smiley boy!

Rip, rip, rip. Tear, tear, tear.

I wonder what was so shocking.

The entire group helped Albert play with his new toys. They played like this for pretty much the rest of the afternoon. Fun times!

For dinner, I had a lot of difficulty figuring out what to make. Albert is our least picky child and eats most things we put in front of him. He has no obvious favorite meal. When asked, he told me what he wanted for dessert. I'm not quite down with cake for dinner so we kept trying. Then he listed off his siblings' favorite meals which was sweet but not quite what we were going for. After much discussion, he settled on chicken strips and "orange" fries (sweet potato). Good stuff.

The dessert he chose was "peanut butter cupcakes." I'm not sure where he came up with that idea but the closest we were willing to try was chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. I even hid a peanut butter cup in them. That seemed to be good enough for him. Phew! Ironically, I made some cupcakes with and some without the "surprise" inside. One of my helpers (who shall remain nameless) was practicing his or her frosting skills and got the two kinds confused. It ended up that all the boys but Albert ended up with a "surprise" cupcake. Luckily, he was finally able to eat his "surprise" cupcake today after lunch.

And here is the birthday song for your viewing pleasure. Yay for Albert and his four whole years with us!!