Eli is 4!

Only 13 days after Natalie's, we had our second December birthday!  Eli was so excited to be 4.  Both of his preschool friends and pretty much all of his church friends had already turned 4 and he was quite sensitive to the fact that he was still only 3.  It was a great day!

Eli decided that he wanted those store-bought powdered donuts for his breakfast.  It sure made it easy for me.  I don't know that he actually ate any that morning, though.  He is funny about breakfast sometimes and doesn't eat much.  

We got to have preschool at our house on his birthday.  We had fun making tortilla snowflakes:

They loved them!  It was fun pulling that idea out again. (Remember when I made them with my tiny girls? So crazy that Lizzy was younger than Eli is now.)

Our neighbor's ginko tree was dropping leaves like crazy and it was just about perfect that day so we had to go and play in them.  It was so much fun!  We had leaf fights, made leaf angels, then built up a pile and jumped in.  Our favorite thing was getting big handfuls and throwing them up in the air.

So beautiful.  Ginko trees might be my very favorite:

That afternoon we made Eli's Daniel Tiger cake:

I freehanded that one and it turned out pretty delicious.

We had beef stroganoff for his birthday dinner, including an apple salad with raisins (his request).

He was so excited to open his presents and eat cake and ice cream.  I only got video of that so I took some screenshots.

He was so excited to get this Pigeon activity book he'd wanted for a long time:

He also loved this creature power suit to match the one Nate got for his birthday:

He was the perfect age this year.  He was so excited about everything he got.

Getting ready to blow out his candles:

Eli has had a great year.  He has grown so much!  He is getting older and slowly correcting so many of his cute phrases that we wish wouldn't go away.  Here's a few of my favorites that he still says:

-"Keen": king. He sometimes has trouble with the "ing" sound.

-He fairly recently figured out how to say his "l"s and the "th" sound.  He's still pretty proud of it and over-prounces them or excitedly tells me about how he can say different words now.  It is adorable.

-One day out of nowhere Eli said, "Yo, yo, what's up home slice? Yo, yo."  The other kids and I cracked up so of course he kept saying it over and over after that, hoping for the same response.  We think he got it from Studio C. :)

One of Eli's favorite things is to use force lightning, or air/earth/fire/water-bending on people (from Avatar).  He will often do it to adults he doesn't know that well, which is a bit awkward.  Luckily he's pretty cute so he can get away with it.

I mean--isn't this pretty terrifying?

This is one of my favorite looks Eli gives:

I'm so thankful for my little buddy.  I'm thankful for the time we have to hang out during the day while his siblings are at school.  He absolutely loves games so we play a lot of those--Go Fish, Memory, and Cover Your Assets.  He's good, too, so we are genuinely competing.  He also loves playing Wii with his brother--especially Mario games.  He loves watching Daniel Tiger, Wild Kratts, and Odd Squad.  

I love this picture I found on my phone:

He still loves cheese and yogurt.  And carrots!  He really loves carrots. 

He also loves marshmallows and can often be found sneaking some in the kitchen.  He's also been known to hide cookies and other things he steals under his pillow.  :)

Eli's very favorite days of the week are Mondays and Fridays.  This is because those are his days off from doing dinner chores.  He is often heard telling people, "Today is my day off!" or telling me, "I can't wait for tomorrow--it's my day off!" He really doesn't like doing chores.  But, when he decides to work, he's a good little helper.

We sure love our Eli.  He brings so much happiness and sunshine to our family.