Happy Easter

Happy Easter. This year I decided not to fall into the trap of overbuying stuff for the kids for Easter. You know those Easter trinkets that entertain the kids for a few minutes and then find their way to the bottom of the toy basket. I could not believe my eyes when I went down the Easter aisle at Target. They had so much stuff from every kind of character from Elmo to Hello Kitty to Spiderman. Crazy. I guess like everything else, Easter is getting more commercialized. It's not just peeps and chocolate bunnies anymore.
Checking out the Easter goods.
I tried to make most of their stuff myself---the lambs, egg puzzle and......
gnomes. I was really proud of my gnomes each with their own pillow, leaf bed and blanket. Not to mention the cupcakes. Excuse 0ur "Easter grass", it was a little out of control. I tried not to buy to much candy but think that last bag of hershey kisses pushed us into candy overload.
Waiting for the egg hunt at church to begin.
Disappointed faces. Grace was upset that she didn't get more eggs. See, I told she finally got the concept this year. I guess we need to work on being grateful for what we have.

How cute is Lucas in his big boy button down shirt? I made him a tie from an adult sized tie last night but it did not survive the tugging and yanking of a little boy who did not want to wear it. I mean he didn't know that I stayed up until 1 am working on that tie just for him. Oh well, he still looked so cute, tie or not.
The after photo meaning the photo taken after we opened a piece of candy for them. See candy does make the world a better, happier place.

And those are the only Easter photos I have. After church we went over to parent's and had a delicious lunch followed by more candy, a nap, more candy and another candy hunt.

Catching up

Hello. Anyone still around? I know it's been forever since I last posted anything. My excuses? Um...kids, colds,allergies, birthdays.....let's see, what else? Hmmm global warming--will you buy that one? Go ask Al Gore. He'll tell you all about it with fancy slides and all. But I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here to get caught up on this blog gone awry.

I haven't quite figured out how I'm gonna do this. My last post was in January and I do have some half written posts waiting in the wings and pictures hanging out unedited in iphoto just waiting to find their way to you. I'll just surprise you, okay? I bet you can't wait.

So let's get it on.....

April fool's day

No April fool's jokes here although Grace had fun "fooling" people. We had a lovely day at the Wildflower center amongst the bluebonnets. We have really been blessed the last couple of weeks with some great spring weather. Don't they look so sweet?
Too sweet.
Throwing pennies into the wishing well with Grandma. Lucas has recently gotten obsessed with money. Everytime he gets out of the car now he has to grab a coin out of the cupholder.
Such a sweet picture with Grandma and GreatGrandma. Look how well everyone matched. And no, it was not planned. I guess we all had bluebonnets on our minds.
Lucas's other new obsession is throwing things, anything into bodies of water. That's a little stream below him.
Checking out the stone windows.
Grace demanded a picture with this statue.
The perfect ending to a perfect day. Sometimes I am reminded how lucky I am to be able to stay at home with my kids. And today was one of those days. Not many people get to spend a beautiful day out with their kids at such a pretty place. Many thanks to my mom for inviting us.

Our funny April Fool's day story: Steve and I really pulled one over on Grace. She loves sweets and is always, always asking for dessert. So, after dinner we drove out to Dairy Queen to get some ice cream but we didn't tell her where we were going (we've never been there with her). When we got there, we convinced here that they sold brussel sprouts and green beans there. We even got her to agree to try the brussel sprouts---"they make them with just a little bit of butter and pepper". She had no clue. You should have seen her face. I'm just sorry I don't have a picture of it. She finally got her ice cream and that put a big smile on her face and made her laugh at our April Fool's joke. Silly girl.

Easter egg hunt

My parents had their annual easter egg hunt on a perfect spring day.

Here's Steve trying to keep the kids out of the jacuzzi. An almost impossible feat but he did a good job. No one got too wet.

Waiting with Grandpa for the hunt to begin. They close all the blinds in the house while the eggs are being hidden to discourage cheating.
This is the first year that Grace really got the whole idea of the egg hunt and that the goal is to find as many eggs as you can. She did a really good job.
Lucas is still working on his hunting skills. After finding this, his first egg, he gave it to me and said "Mommy, open please. Candy". I guess I should have said something other than let's go outside and find some candy. He spent most of the rest of the hunt eating what he'd found in that egg. He'll figure it out soon enough. More eggs=more candy.
All of her hard work paid off.
His too.
Happy hunting!
All the kids after the hunt. The key is to take the picture after the hunt that way you can bribe them to sit still with a piece of candy. We are some smart folks. I think getting them to all look at the camera at the same time is a different story.
A quick picture with the bunny pinata before it's beating. I'm not sure but I think it's got some fangs growing out of it's nose. A little creepy.
"Helping" Daddy with the pinata.
For whatever reason, Lucas wanted nothing to do with this pinata. Too cute? Too scary nose fangs? Who knows.
Grace had no problems hitting it. An action photo just to prove it.
Again, he didn't understand the concept of grabbing as much candy as he could but rather thought the point was to just eat it as he found it. Works for him.
Grace with her bag o' candy.
And because there was not enough sugar eaten that day, we ended the day with a cupcake.
It tastes better if you shove the whole thing in your mouth. And it's a must to open your mouth so wide that it makes your eyebrows raise up in approval, otherwise you're just wastin' time.

Date with daddy

Their first date.
Daddy took her to lunch at Waterloo and to see the Princess and the Frog. From what I hear, they had a great time.

The first cupcake of 2010

So, what do we do around here to kick off the New Year? Make cupcakes of course. My mom bought Grace this princess cupcake decorating kit and she could not wait another second to make them. We ate breakfast and then got baking.

Once they were cooled and iced, the kids got busy eating, I mean decorating. The kit was pretty cool. It came with edible paints, decorating gels and little edible images to put on the cupcakes. I'm pretty sure that Lucas thought of the paint brush as another eating utensil. Great for icing, not so great for cake.

His finished product was a little abstract and slobbery.

Grace went to town on her cupcake but after decorating one could not be encouraged to decorate another. "But, Mommy, I want to eat my cupcake."

Her finished product before she devoured it, well, before she devoured the icing. The cake part was left intact.

A fun kit, plus I saved the extra paints and edible stickers for another year, I mean day.

Happy New Year

We closed out 2009 at my parent's with a New Year's Eve dinner followed by a marshmallow roast and fireworks display.
Lucas did not quite get the part about roasting the marshmallow and promptly removed his marshmallow from the skewer.
It was pretty cold and windy too. The perfect combination for a fire, right?So happy to have a big marshmallow all to himself.
A picture with the blue moon in the background. You can barely see it but it's there and no it's not blue.
Getting ready for the fireworks show, the illegal fireworks show mind you.
Waiting for the egg laying chicken firecracker.
The last picture of them before they caught on fire. Not really but with the wind blowing like crazy I'm surprised only the marshmallows got toasted.
Christina writing a New Year's message with her sparkler.
Bubby getting into the action. My dad would say "shake it, shake it" and he'd go crazy.
He really, really loved the sparklers. A little too much for my liking and makes me think I should start hiding all fire sources from him. Oh boys!
Even Grace shook a sparkler or two. Grace! I was really surprised at this one. Not surprising that she held her nose. Later after the fireworks display was over, I started thinking about what I would have said in the ER if we'd had to take one of the in after they caught fire or burned their hands/face (take your pick). Probably not my best parenting moment to let my almost 2 and 4 year old play with sparklers. I don't know. Let me just say that there was a lot of close, adult supervision. So close that I almost ended up with burns to my thighs and face a couple of times.
The pyrotechnician himself. The apple really does not fall far from the tree, right? This picture was with the $3 "big gun" of the night which the fireworks guy sold as a "fountain of fireworks" and nothing that would scare a 3 year old. Well it was a fountain, probably the loudest I've ever seen and it lasted several minutes. Too funny especially since we were trying to be discrete about popping fireworks. Definitely freaked out the kids. Good job, Daddy!
Snacking on a New Year's dessert of chocolate covered strawberries and buenuelos after the countdown to 8 o'clock. You didn't really think we stayed up until midnight.
We went the whole nine yards----dinner, roasted marshmallows, fireworks, champagne, hats and blowers.
A rare photo of Steve and I.
And an even more rare photo with all of us with our hats on. Sort of.

Well, Happy New Year everyone! Good riddance 2009 and hello 2010! I can't wait to see what the new year brings.