Easter bunny day

At our house, the Easter Bunny comes on Saturday.  

Nicholas was up really early, asking us if the Easter Bunny had come yet.

He hadn't. But a few hours later, we let Nicholas get out of bed, get dressed, and find his Easter basket.

As he was coming down the stairs, he shouted,

"I love Easter Bunny Day!"

Little sister was pretty excited too.

And once they stopped fighting over Nicholas's basket and realized that Ellie had her own basket, the morning got much more fun.

 The favorites?  Ellie was pretty excited about the yogurt "monkey" drinks. And the stickers.
Nicholas was all about the orange squirt gun.

After breakfast we headed outside to find the eggs hidden in the yard.

While I was hiding them, a golfer came past and informed me that I wasn't hiding them well enough...

"You need to make those a little harder to find!" he said.

I told him we have a one-year-old.

 But in the end, it was Ellie who was finding the eggs...
Nicholas was looking so hard that he would walk right past them on the grass at his feet.  

 He ended up with quite a haul in the end, though.

I love where I live.

A couple hours later, we headed to the park for the city-held Easter egg hunt.  
There were so.many.people there.  It was nuts.

We ran over to the starting line, Nicholas clutching his basket, and then it began.
With the siren of a fire truck.
Nicholas freaked. Loud noises are not something he handles well.  He froze, hands over his ears, crying and refusing to go grab the eggs that were just a few feet in front of him.
Within seconds, literally, the hundreds of kids had swooped in and taken all the eggs.

Poor kid.  
A darling sweet girl noticed Nicholas crying with an empty basket, so she came over and took three eggs out of her bucket and placed them in Nicholas's basket.  

By then, Kent and Ellie had caught up with us and we found a box of baby bunnies for sale.  
We just had to cuddle one for a few minutes.

If I ever forget how much work pets are, we might be in trouble.  
That bunny was just so cute!

Then we headed out to get hamburgers for lunch and went shopping at the outlets for Ellie's Easter dress.  The weather was beautiful, the kids were happy, and we got to find eggs and hold bunnies.  We couldn't ask for a better "Easter Bunny Day."

steve the duck

 We colored Easter eggs last weekend at my parents' house.
Nicholas colored fifteen eggs in about two and a half minutes.
So he colored them again.
And then again.
What started out as fifteen multi-colored pastel eggs turned into fifteen orangey-yellow eggs.  Then fifteen blue-ish eggs.  And then fifteen varying shades of green eggs.

Ellie didn't last long...she was pretty aggressive, trying to grab and tip the cups of egg dye.  After a few minutes, Grandpa and Ellie retreated to take a nap.

And that's right about when things got really silly.

Nicholas looked over at me, did a little wiggle dance, and then said,

"Whew! It's a good thing I have no idea what you are!"

What?

And then, out of the blue, he was humming and wiggling and said,

"Steve!"

Then my mom dyed an egg that had one single white polka dot.  She drew an eye on it.

She held it up for us to see,

and Nicholas loudly declared,
"It's Steve the Duck!"

You can't script this kind of silliness.

 So, naturally, my brother Josh made a conversation bubble nametag for Steve the Duck.
I love my family.

Happy Easter!

hungry or tired?

I guess he just couldn't decide. 
Falling asleep next to the fridge (at Grandma and Grandpa's house) must have seemed like the best option.

a place to be crazy

My Grandma Murray adores children.
Her whole life, her whole focus, has always been her own children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  She loves them, and it is evident in everything she does and everything she says.
Grandma Murray's house is a place where kids are welcome to be kids. Run around. Throw pillows and balls, color, eat ice cream, balloon volleyball, marbles, sing and dance.
She loves the playing, the laughing, the chaos.  Usually she's laughing right along, often laughing even harder than the kids are.

We spent several afternoons at Grandma Murray's house last week,
and my kids were their crazy silly selves.

She wanted my camera.  We've entered "toddlerhood."  As of last week, Ellie is now a fit-throwing, tantrum-having, determined little girl.  
At least this time around we know that it will end...eventually.

Ellie was spinning in circles, around and around and around, making herself very dizzy and laughing like a crazy girl.  And there's Grandma Murray, laughing along with her.

st patrick's party

 My dear friend Kamille suggested throwing a St. Patricks' Day party.  We had five families from our neighborhood come over.  We had nine adults, six children, and five babies.  It was crazy fun.

After discovering that we were all planning on bringing guacamole and chips as our green food, we decided to coordinate a little.  Chocolate covered mint oreos, green veggie tray (and green dip!), candied grapes, perfectly gooey green rice-krispy treats, and some of the best guacamole I've ever had!

Kamille made the yummy green punch.  I bought the stemware from IKEA-seriously an awesome place.  We labeled everyone's cups with washi tape nametags. 
And I felt pretty pinterest-ey.  

 The kids all had so much fun playing together,
Kent gave the men a tour of his finally-painted-for-the-third-time movie room (don't buy cheap paint, we've learned),
and the moms all just chatted. We were having so much fun that we didn't even get around to playing all the fun games Kamille organized.  

We'll just have to do another party so we can play those games!

We've been in Utah for sixteen months now.  And in our new home for eight.  
It takes a long time, but I'm oh so happy to feel like we have friends again.  
Thanks everyone for partying with us!

while Daddy's away

Last week, Kent went to Alaska.  On a "man trip" with his dad and brothers.  They snowmobiled across 400 miles of Alaskan wilderness.  Kent's dad wrote a post about it on Teresa's blog here.

While he was gone, instead of single-mom-ing it for a week,

we ran away to play all week too!

Although we went somewhere much less cold and wilderness-ey.

I really really love living close enough to just drive up to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the week.
And I love being in this season of life where we have no schedule, no school, no reason not to just go play for the whole entire week.

is it just me?

Or do other moms unintentionally dress their entire family in the same color?

I do it several times a week.
I don't think about it while I'm dressing everyone.  Then we're dressed, I look at us,
and I think, "Huh. I did it again."

What's really weird is how often Kent comes home from work and I realize he's also wearing the same color as the rest of us.

The family that dresses together....
right?

today it's spring

 With the time change we now wake up before the sun comes over the mountains.
In the early light we found some backyard visitors.
Ellie goes wild when she sees these desert sheep.  

Yesterday morning there were eight robins in our backyard.  I remember as a little girl my mom would always point out the robins--they're the first sign of Spring, she'd say.
So I made sure my kids noticed the robins.  It's Spring, and we have robins to prove it.

We needed to go grocery shopping,
but we got distracted by the warm weather, and the kids played outside with our next-door neighbors (who are moving. Boo.). It is beautiful today.  53 degrees, sunny with white fluffy clouds, birds singing, ahhh.  

I love that Ellie isn't crawling anymore.  It's so much easier for her to play outside when I don't have to worry about her eating rocks or other nasty stuff.

Aaaand, I picked up a shriveled dead mouse with the snow shovel.  The snowmelt always leaves such "treasures" uncovered. It was just as delightful as it sounds.

 We opened the windows.  I bought a Creamy Tahitian Coconut melty brick for my scentsy (Walmart-only $2!) and it is divine.  
I feel like singing. Hooray for Spring!

 Nicholas stuck his head out the window when we got back from shopping and told his friends to "Just wait one minute! I'm coming--just need to put on my shoes and shocks!"  
He doesn't usually say "shocks" like that.

Ellie learned a new word this week.  "Oopsie," only she says it "boopsie."  That brings her total word count to somewhere around sixteen I think.  Dad, Mom, Nicholas ("diss"), ball, bottle, please, thank-you, up, more, Sarah, yes ("dah!" like a Russian), bird, apple, banana, water, and oopsie.

  

I love my kitchen island.   And this is generally what it looks like in the middle of the day.  My workstation. Green decorations and party supplies for our party this weekend, recipe binder, strawberries from lunch, stack of towels (because my kids spill things probably fifty times a day), ingredients and mixer for making cheesecake, flowers, muffin tin (not sure why it's out), and pretzels with laughing cow cheese (my snack).


Tonight we're taking cheesecake to my sister, going out for pizza, and I get to go to Target by myself afterwards.  

me and them

Kent spent most of February working long days, late nights.  
It was just me and the kids, from wake up, breakfast, playtime, naptime, lunchtime, walktime, grocery shopping-time, storytime, dinnertime, to bathtime and bedtime.  Dinnertime was always the most crazy, with hungry crying kiddos clinging to my legs as I rushed around trying to fill their bottomless bellies.

I'm not going to say that it was easy, because it wasn't.  By the time I got the kids all ready for bed and Kent came home just in time to help me tuck them in, I was completely exhausted.  It was a satisfied kind of tired,though, the tired that comes from working hard all day long.  
One of those days, I walked past the couch as I picked up the toys for the eighty-sixth time and I stopped. "Oh yeah," I thought, "we have a couch!" I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd had a chance to sit on it.  

The days were long and sometimes my temper was short, 
but we also had some fun too. 
Making up games with the balloons Kent sent for Valentines Day, eating our grilled cheese sandwiches together at dinner (I didn't have nearly enough motivation to make a real meal for just myself), building blanket tents, and playing
hide-and-seek twelve times every day. 

By the way, Ellie is a much better finder than Nicholas.  She found me first, every single time, while Nicholas would walk right past me.  

Kent's back to working normal hours again, and it was good for us.  The kids and I, we became even better buds.  

My next goal?  Finding ways to get closer to the husband I haven't seen much of lately. I think we're due for a date.  



And if you have a minute, check out this inspiring blog sent to me by Heather, a sweet reader, about how her beautiful daughter gave her the courage to fight cancer.

february, goodbye

Just a few glimpses into our February

 Sometimes, you just feel like sleeping in a big box.
He slept there all night. For several nights in a row.  
When he asked if he could sleep in his box, I thought, Sure.  Why not?  
My theory?  As long as he's in his room, he's not going to hurt himself or anyone else, and he's sleeping, I don't really care where or what he sleeps on.

 They were hesitant to eat the pink pancakes.  Until they realized they still tasted like pancakes. Then all was well.

 Our very first very own brand new washer and dryer.  The used ones we bought finally gave up the ghost.  
And it's amazing how much fun doing laundry is right now.  I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but for now, anyone have anymore laundry you want cleaned and dried? I have a new washer and dryer that are super fun to use!  (folded is a completely different story...)

 Working on setting up my playroom--the shelf and the cupboard were made by my grandpa.  In fact, the cupboard used to be my mom's when she was little.

I told her she looked lovely with the blackberry juice smeared in her hair. This is the cheese face she gave me.  She does it all the time and gosh do I love it!

Cheese face again. And our science experiment.  Colored vinegar dropped into baking soda.  Super awesome.  (And we're still working on getting Nicholas to dress himself in the mornings.)

Welcome March.  It's 45 degrees today with even warmer weather ahead.  Hooray for Spring!