Elijah turns 4!

Our little guy turned 4 years old!  He has been telling people so long that he is almost 4, now he can finally tell people that he is 4 years old!

Cora went to the dollar store and bought some things for Elijah with her money, it was so cute seeing her thinking of him and how excited he was about her presents.  

Saying thank you.

Trying out one of his new presents from us, a fun little balance board I found at the local kids consignment store.  

He chose to go to Arby's (aka the Hat restaurant) for his birthday dinner.

We just had a simple cake on his birthday because his big cake was going to be on the weekend when we went to Herndon.  

We are so proud of our little guy and how big he has grown!  He has been a great companion to me this past year while Cora's been in school.  He's getting bigger but he's still kind of a "momma's boy" and I hope he always will be.  He is quiet and sensitive and sweet.  He still has a cute little boy voice that I love to hear.  One of my favorite of his idiosyncrasies is that he will always answer questions with "I am" or "I do" instead of "yes."  For instance if I say "Are you hungry, Elijah?" he'll answer "I am."

We decided to drive up to Herndon for the weekend to visit with everyone and celebrate Elijah and Dad's birthdays.  The twins also had birthdays the week after we were there so it was nice to all get together for a birthday weekend.  We took the kids to Chuck-E-Cheese, which they loved, of course, although I think all of the adults left there with a headache.  (Talk about over-stimulation!)

Elijah wanted a Spiderman cake, of course, since he's obsessed with Spiderman.  I chickened out on making a Spiderman out of frosting and decided to laminate a drawing I did of Spiderman instead and stick that on the cake.  I didn't think he'd care but he did tell me afterwards he thought I was going to make Spiderman on the cake that they could eat, so I felt kind of bad for taking the easy way out. Mom made the cakes and I frosted and decorated them, with the kids' help.  We used some skittles and twizzlers to decorate in the Spiderman colors.  We did one layer for Dad and one for Elijah.  Dad didn't have room for a design on his since he had so many candles!  Old man.  ;)

Birthday boys!

It took a few of us to light all those candles.

Dad needed some help on his.

So much smoke!  haha 

Spider pig, spider pig... walking on the ceiling with Uncle Kevin's help.

The kids made party hats like they always like to do.

Betty looked especially cute in her party hat.

And then, of course, we had to play our traditional birthday pin the tail game.  This time, "Pin the Spider on Spiderman"  Luckily drawing the poster-sized Spiderman was easier than Cora's Twilight Sparkle.  The image I choose to copy was symmetrical and cartoony so it didn't take too long.  It was still a couple hours of work though, at least.  We were able to use Gabe's party hat/crown as our blindfold for the game.  

Elijah was kind of bummed about his first try.

Cora remembered the trick of feeling for the edges from her party and did pretty well.

Gabe may have gotten a little bit of a handicap (we moved the poster when he did his)

Dad reading the card Cora made for him.

Betty clapping.

Elijah and his big Spiderman from Grandma and Papa.  It was just what he wanted, he had been asking me to make him a Spiderman pillow which I probably could have figured out how to sew but I really didn't want to.  So he was really pleased.  

Posing with his party decorations.

Simple sharpie decorated balloons I saw on Pinterest.  

Cora and Elijah had fun popping all the balloons the next day.

Betty didn't like the balloons popping though.

We stopped by Kate's before we driving back home to visit a bit and because Elijah wanted to see their snake Hercules.

The boys fed him while we were there and the kids were fascinated.