Birthday Interviews

Following our annual tradition, I asked Cody and Jaden some questions this month about their likes and dislikes. Their answers always entertain me and occasionally surprise me too. I like recording the interviews on video so I can capture their expressions. In the past, I have usually tried to record the boys privately so they don't hear each other's answers. Unfortunately, I forgot to do that this year, so you'll notice a bit of overlap in some of their answers. I also couldn't figure out how to get my camera to record clearly, so the images are a bit blurry. Bummer! I'll have to be more on my game next year-- ha! Anyway, here are the 2020 birthday interviews...

CODY'S 8 YEAR OLD BIRTHDAY INTERVIEW

1. How old are you? 8

2. Who is your best friend? Micah and Carter, our neighbors

3. What is your favorite thing to do? play with stuffies or write books on my iPad

4. What is your favorite color? black

5. What is your favorite food? dessert

6. What is your least favorite food? main courses like meat

7. What do you like to do with your family? play games

8. What is your favorite toy? my stuffed animals

9. What do you want to do when you grow up? be an author or illustrator

10. What makes you happy? my iPad

11. What makes you sad? meatloaf

12. What is your favorite book? the Captain Underpants series

13. What is your favorite show to watch? The Garfield show

14. What is your favorite movie? Detective Pikachu

15. Where do you like to go? to the library

16. What is your favorite treat? frosted brownies, scotcheroos, and on and on and on

17. What is your favorite animal? piggie, and I'm starting to like birds

18. What is your favorite song? You Say

19. What is your favorite thing to wear? this shirt

20. What are you afraid of? the devil

21. What are you really good at? baseball

22. What are you not very good at? volleyball

23. What is your favorite restaurant? McDonalds

24. What do you like to do with mommy? play Wordscapes

25. What do you like to do with daddy? play tennis in the street

26. What do you like about Children's Ministry sometimes we get to watch videos

27. What do you like to do with your friends? jump on Carter and Micah's trampoline

28. What's your favorite game? Life, maybe Monopoly and Diminishing Bridge

29. What do you love about Jesus? that He created me

30. What would you do with $1000? buy 100 (stuffed) birds

31. What do you hope to do before your next birthday? get three more birds

JADEN'S 8 YEAR OLD BIRTHDAY INTERVIEW

1. How old are you? 8

2. Who is your best friend? Micah and Carter

3. What is your favorite thing to do? trade Pokemon cards with my cousins

4. What is your favorite color? yellow

5. What is your favorite food? dessert -- mallow bars, buckeyes

6. What is your least favorite food? meat

7. What do you like to do with your family? play a lot of games

8. What is your favorite toy? I like my birds.

9. What do you want to do when you grow up? be an author

10. What makes you happy? a lot of stuff but mostly my iPad

11. What makes you sad? when my baseball season is canceled because of the coronavirus

12. What is your favorite book? Thea Stilton series

13. What is your favorite show to watch? The Garfield show

14. What is your favorite movie? Detective Pikachu

15. Where do you like to go? to a park with my cousins

16. What is your favorite treat? candy and graham crackers with peanut butter and chocolate chips

17. What is your favorite animal? penguins

18. What is your favorite song? Testify

19. What is your favorite thing to wear? this shirt that I got for my birthday

20. What are you afraid of? the devil

21. What are you really good at? soccer and baseball and tennis

22. What are you not very good at? volleyball

23. What is your favorite restaurant? McDonalds

24. What do you like to do with mommy? play a lot of games like Stone Age and Life

25. What do you like to do with Daddy? play a lot of other games like Stone Age. He's a really good Stone Age player.

26. What do you like about Children's Ministry? that they give out snacks

27. What do you like to do with your friends? play outside

28. What's your favorite game? Stone Age

29. What do you love about Jesus? that He created this house... and me

30. What would you do with $1000? I woudl buy a lot of birds and get a lot of Pokemon cards

31. What do you hope to do before your next birthday? play a lot of games, have pizza and chicken pot pie and buy 1 bird

These 8-year-old boys are pretty special to us. We are so thankful to God for the gift of their lives and love seeing them grow and develop each year. Happy birthday, Jaden and Cody!

8th Birthday

Jaden and Cody turned 8 at the beginning of June. We were thankful that our county had started to open back up following the quarantine, so we felt comfortable having our extended family over to celebrate. How nice it felt to have a large group gathering again! Jaden and Cody had requested scotcheroos for their birthday dessert--easiest birthday cake ever! :)

The boys chose a color scheme for their party, and I put together a few coordinating decorations.

Cody and Jaden also chose a few large group games they wanted to play. When the family arrived, we played Name it Eight, a scattegories-type game that Daddy created. Then, we moved into team charades, a game that always has us laughing!

We ended with Careers, a group guessing game that Uncle Jon led.

Jason worked hard to grill burgers, hot dogs, and brats for the crew.

After dinner, we sang to the boys, enjoyed their scotcheroos, and opened presents.

We sure love these new 8 year olds!

Unfortunately, the coronavirus changed our plans for the boys' typical themed birthday party with friends. Thankfully, after having such a great time celebrating their cousins' birthday in May, Jaden and Cody were very excited (perhaps even moreso!) about replicating that experience with their cousins for their own birthday. They chose to have Ian, Ryan, and Nathan spend two nights and parts of three days at our home. These boys were active and silly and just had the best time together!

Shortly after arriving, the boys rode their scooters around our neighborhood and played around our community pond for quite some time. It was a warm day, so having a water war was a perfect concluding activity.

The Post-Water War Photo-- I'm not sure if they were trying to get warm again, if they were worn out, or just enjoying the time of relaxation. Whatever the reason, it sure made for a funny picture!

That evening, after a meal of chicken pot pie (Jaden's request) and leftover teriyaki chicken (Cody's request), the boys enjoyed birthday treat #2-- mint chocolate chip ice cream cake.

The rest of the day was filled with Pokemon trading, more playtime outside, some video games, random dress-up/sword fighting adventures, movie night, and silly story writing. 

Not surprisingly, these stories contained a fair share of explosions and bathroom humor. The boys got the biggest kick out of reading these out loud and often had to hand the story over to me to finish since they were all laughing so hard!

The next day, we loaded everyone into our van and headed down to Galveston Beach.

It was a beautiful day to be outside! The boys (and Adley) built sand fortresses, jumped into waves, rode their boogie boards, fed seagulls, and even did some kite flying. The time flew by!

Once we returned home, we had a pizza dinner and ended the day with another movie. The next morning we forgot to take any pictures! We spent our time playing tennis at a park, playing on the playground, and then recovering from the heat with Gatorade and donuts back at home. Ian, Ryan, and Nathan headed home right before lunchtime.

Jaden and Cody loved every minute with their cousins and didn't seem to miss a birthday party with friends in the slightest! It wasn't the birthday celebration we had originally envisioned, but it ended up being wonderfully low-key and full of great memories.

More Letter Activities

As Jaden and Cody finished out their 2nd grade school year, they gained a little more independence with their online learning assignments. That freed me up to do more letter activities with Adley. She continued to love all the projects we did and would eagerly ask each morning, "What activities am I doing today?" Such fun to teach this energetic little learner! :)

Letter I

One of the first games we played with the letter I was this ice cream math game. Adley has really improved in recent months in her ability to count objects. She liked this game where she had to count the sprinkles on each ice cream cone and find the coordinating number.

Then, Adley made her own (tall!) ice cream cones with dot painters.

She also enjoyed having free play with ice cubes.

Another day, Adley cut paper strips into squares to build an igloo.

She also filled this insect jar by rolling a die and counting the correct number of insects to go inside.

Letter H

For Adley's tactile letter book page, we brought out one of her favorite things-- stickers! These heart stickers worked perfectly for the letter H. She used this entire sticker sheet to fill in her letter.

Going on a heart hunt was Adley's favorite letter H activity! She re-played this game several times throughout the week. I would hide 10 paper hearts around the house, and when she found them, Adley had to place the numbered hearts on the correct outline. Adley even enjoyed hiding the hearts for me too.

Her last heart-related activity was this heart-coloring worksheet. It was good practice following Mommy's directions!

Another day, Adley built a whole neighborhood of houses with rectangles and triangles.

She even wanted to add windows and doors. What a full, fancy neighborhood! Adley was so proud of this!

That same day, we went on a "house scavenger hunt" where Adley had to count certain items in our home, like sinks, beds, fans, and stairs. She did all the counting but needed help writing the numbers. :)

Our last H activity was making paper faces, adding hair, and giving the people "haircuts." 

This week, we also reviewed writing all the letters that Adley had learned so far. This girl loves her easel, so it was easy to convince her to practice!

Letter D

On D week, Adley decorated her tactile letter book page with dot stickers.

Then, she made a dog craft using her fingerprints.

I don't always use this Letters of All Sizes worksheet with Adley when we learn a new letter, but it does make for great practice. She loved completing it this week. This picture makes her look so grown up!

Our funniest activity involved dinosaurs. A group of Adley's dinosaurs accidentally crawled into our freezer and got themselves frozen in ice. Oh no! Adley used a pipette and salty hot water to try to free the poor dinosaurs.

This process took quite a long time, so eventually we resorted to just pouring the water on top of the creatuers. Adley was so excited when we helped them get completely free.

When the dinos were fully dry, we made dinosaur footprints in playdough.

By now, Adley had officially learned 4 of the five letters in her name. "A" was actually the first letter we taught her so she could start to "sign" her name in cards and notes. This week, I taught her the Y as well so she could write her full name. I was pretty impressed with Adley's first name-writing attempt!

Letter P

When we learned the letter P, we did a few popcorn activities. First, we tried painting with popcorn kernels by shaking the kernels in a paint-filled box. Unfortunately, the kernels weren't heavy enough and just got stuck in the paint. The final product didn't look too great, but at least the process was fun! :)

Then we popped some of the (non-painted covered) kernels and used the popcorn to decorate a sheep.

Finally, Adley predicted how far she thought she could throw popcorn pieces across our kitchen...

...and then tested her hypothesis.

Pretty soon we had dots and popcorn all over our kitchen floor!

Two other short activities were sorting these pumpkin pics by size...

...and tossing pennies into a bowl.

Letter B

Adley was so meticulous about placing these beans in a letter B shape for her tactile letter book page this week. She did this all by herself!

Since Adley is a HUGE gummy bear fan, sorting and graphing bears was a definite favorite activity.

We also created some balloon rockets in the kitchen while Adley's big brothers were studying. She flew these over and over and over again.

We extended the balloon learning a little more and inflated a balloon in a bottle using a baking soda and vinegar solution. Adley was very impressed with this experiment.

Our last couple activities were playing with blocks and bubbles (great way to wash the germs off our blocks!!)...

... and painting a beach ball.

These letter activities were just perfect to give Adley something to do while Jaden and Cody did their daily schoolwork this spring. She definitely soaked up all she learned and was happily occupied with just about any activity I put in front of her. Our plan is to take a break from the formal letter activities for the summer and start back up when (fingers crossed) the boys return to school in the fall. More to come in the future!