Easter Week in Pictures

I know I'm a bit late on this, but I am finally (for the third time) trying to get my Easter weekend pictures posted.  (If you're reading this it means I was finally successful, yea!)  We started our Easter celebration Friday night coloring Easter eggs.

Can you guess whose egg is whose?  (Hints:  2 are K's and his 2 favorite trains of the week were Molly- a yellow train and Diesel 10- a brown train. H likes to copy K (his name is written on one of them, it's probably too hard to see), and my favorite color is green.  In case you care, H and I made the the two-toned ones and S made the orange polka-dotted one.)  We have serious talent in our family! 

Saturday morning we went to our community Easter egg hunt.  H took a while to catch on to the idea so he only got 4 eggs (man, there were some over-zealous "helpful" parents on the "parents encouraged to stay off" field.  Did someone forget to tell them they only had Hershey's kisses and imitation flavored Tootsie rolls in them?) but he was happy.

K's field went on the count down for the 2 and under field and H and I had the camera at his field so I missed seeing him or getting any pictures.  But he had fun and got some eggs too.

After the egg hunts the boys got to jump in a bouncy house.

While we were waiting in line for the bouncy house my friend came by to say hi and offered to take a family picture.  This is one of a handful of family pictures ever taken of the 5 of us.  (Thanks Kandy!)

The Easter bunny was there and H wanted to go say hi and get his picture taken with him. K shyly declined and went to the playground and watched us from afar.

Sunday morning began with the traditional "mad-dash to get everyone fed, clean, dressed and presentable for church while not completely destroying the house or losing any tempers."  Oh, I mean the traditional "Easter basket and egg hunt."  FYI: The Easter bunny is not totally lame at our house, the multi grain Cheerios are for M because he is now starting to eat finger foods and can't have candy yet.  Although H has already managed to sneak him some.

Another cold and rainy Easter in Seattle!  

(Notice H is wearing his swimming shorts, of course)

After church we went to my parents and ate bacon and waffles with fresh strawberries! (Yum, I hardly ever get bacon).  My parents did an Easter egg hunt with the boys and their cousin.  They got started too quick for me to get pictures.  They each got a pair of PJ's along with some candy.  (In case you can't tell, M's pj's have a crab on the shirt front and it says "Crabby."  How fitting.)

After my parents we went to S's brother's house for dinner and another egg hunt.  I made this rainbow layer jell-o thing that took me forever and looked beautiful.  I should have taken a picture.  Yes, it was just a jell-o dish, but there were 7 different colored layers and each had to set for at least 45 minutes before you could lay the next so it took me a LONG time to make it.  Although I was flattered it got eaten as quickly as it did, I almost had to remind myself not to be sad as it was quickly cut into and mashed around and no one even stopped to look at the beauty that was my jell-o salad.  

This is a picture of the boys and some of their cousins just before the egg hunt.

I had every intention of making a better effort this year to take more opportunity's to teach my children the true meaning and significance of Easter.  I think we will do another Family Home Evening about it.  But let me just say now that I know that Christ lived and died and lived (and lives) again for all of us so that we could all live again as well.  As fun as candy and dinners and egg hunts and family parties are, there is nothing that tops the significance and wonder that is the real celebration of Easter.

The Discovery

I thought I heard that adults don't get pink eye.  I was misinformed.  My cracked and burning dry but sanitized hands were in vain.  And now S feels like he is getting a cold.  Aaahh!  So, despite my hopes of everyone being better, we're back to the old "getting better" phase, I hope.   (But hey, at least now I know that H wasn't just a whiner about his eye drops, they really do sting.) 

Today my oh-so exciting plans are to wash all the sheets and go around the house and wipe down everything with Lysol wipes.  

Very soon I am going to stop complaining and find something wonderful or exciting to post about... I promise.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

While I don't think there is a whole lot of (if any) Irish in me, my favorite color happens to be green so I can't help but get into a holiday that encourages me to incorporate as much green into my day as possible.  We started out the day with big green smiley face chocolate chip pancakes.  K loved them!

H was less than fond of the idea.  I had to force him to first taste a chocolate chip from a pancake before he would even taste a bite of the actual pancake.  I took this picture after he finally tasted the pancakes and decided he would allow me to put one on his plate.  (If this picture were bigger, you could see the huge tears on his cheeks.)

Our day was not entirely centered on St. Patrick's Day, however.  I have a major itching lately to do home improvement projects and decorate the boy's room.  I got an idea. K and I gathered whatever supplies we had around the house; and voila!  The boys very own homemade Cars clock.  It's not my permanent fix for the clock, but K is excited about it.  He hasn't even let me put it back on his wall yet.

S went on a camp-out with the scouts at church recently which made the boys remember they had a small tent of their own.  We discovered that it fit nicely on H's bed and there it's stayed.  This is H taking a nap in the tent (one of the VERY few naps in the past 9 months). Every night the boys get excited about sleeping in the tent and (cheerfully even) take turns sleeping in it.  Maybe this tent thing is a better idea than I thought...

For all you who haven't seen them yet, whether or not you wanted to, here is the first and only picture I have of M's teeth.  It's hard to see them (especially in the midst of all that cheek pudge the camera so effectively enhanced), but they are there.

Can I just say that I am SOOOO tired of winter and everyone being sick?  We've all been sick and busy lately hence the lack of posting.  I almost thought about getting some pictures of our pink-eye adventures as of late, but decided to spare us all that visual image.  Suffice it to say, we had several pink (and a few other colors I''ll leave up to your imagination) eyes.  It wasn't so terrible, except I was so paranoid of spreading it that I was constantly washing my hands and using hand sanitizer.  Which is all well and good except my hands were already dry and then they then started to dry out even more and crack; alcohol-based hand sanitizer isn't exactly soothing on open wounds.  Anyway, enough said about all that... my whole point was I am so so so so ready for sunshine and warm weather and no more colds, coughs, dry skin, runny noses, gray skies and cabin fever.  Yes I love the northwest, but even us born and raised Washingtonians can get a little crazy after 5 months of cold,wet greyness.  Enough complaining.  I said my peace.  On to Spring!