Easter 2011

We had a wonderful Easter weekend! Ben worked Saturday, but I'm just so grateful that he had Easter Sunday off. On Saturday we went to the big egg hunt at the medical school. The kids got so much stuff, but I laughed at how QUICKLY the big lawn of eggs was wiped clean by kids... Jake's egg hunt (for the under 3 year olds) lasted maybe 20 seconds. But he got plenty of goodies in those 20 seconds, so I'm not complaining. :) There was also an inflatable slide and bounce house, crafts, and face painting. The kids really enjoyed it!














I kind of blew it with the Easter bunny this year - truth be told, I realized that the Easter bunny has never actually been to our house before - my kids haven't been suffering by any means though... they always get sooo much candy at grandma's, and easter parties and egg hunts throughout the week. But Emma asked me a few days before Easter, "is the Easter bunny going to come to OUR house this year?"... this made me sad that she was feeling neglected by the bunny. Well, I was at Target later that day, but had Jake AND Becca with me (Becca didn't have school)... I thought that this was really my last chance to snatch up some Easter bunny treats - so I tried to just be sneaky and keep Becca distracted with other stuff while I shopped for a few things. Well, it didn't work. Becca was definitely noticing everything I was grabbing, so I quickly told her "I'm just helping out the Easter bunny this year, because sometimes he gets really busy!". She believed that... but then on Easter morning when the kids went downstairs to see what was left for them, Becca immediately says to Emma "mommy got this stuff from Target". So, Emma looks at me for an explanation and I basically just told her the same thing I told Becca - that I was asked to help out the Easter bunny this year... she looked skeptical. sigh. I hope I didn't completely ruin their belief in the Easter bunny already. oh well. :)


Grandma Dangerfield got the kids all sailor outfits this year for Easter - I thought Jake looked particularly adorable. :) Ben's concerned this kind of outfit will end up as blackmail for when he's older... but c'mon! look how adorable he is, with is sailor hat and tall socks! :)






We went to Ben's parents home right after church- we had a great afternoon... we attempted to fly a kite, ate a delicious dinner of ham, rolls, scalloped potatoes, spinach salad, artichoke, and deviled eggs (egg deserts!). The kids also loved the egg hunt as usual. They loaded up! Jake ate WAY too much chocolate (because I decided to let him)... he later complained of a tummy ache. oh, sorry Jake. We also celebrated the two Ben's birthdays.... Ben got some lovely gifts and we enjoyed carrot cake later.
















And the new favorite thing to do is cuddle little Caroline when we are over too... she's about 6 weeks old now and definitely still the new fun toy. :) Emma LOVED her time getting to hold her cousin Caroline. I definitely think she's ready to have another little baby in our house. Only 3 1/2 weeks left till our induction date! wow! I need to get to work.

Earth Day and bunny races!

Happy Earth Day! I'm pretty sure we've never done ANYTHING for Earth Day before, but this time, I was such a clever mommy and convinced my kids that it would be fun to weed our yard for Earth Day... it actually went well! The girls both did a good amount of weeding and we got our front yard all done and a section of our backyard completed... as you can imagine, weeding while pregnant is a miserable task. I'm definitely blaming that for the fact that our backyard has turned into a weed forest. But thank you Emma and Becca for being such good little Earth Day helpers, especially while mommy can hardly bend over....


The truth is, I convinced them to weed because they needed to get quite a bit of chores done in order to do Family Movie Night tonight (we had gotten very behind on kids chores this week), and so their weeding counted towards some chore points. Since we had so many chores and cleaning to do today, I split up the work in between Easter activities to keep them motivated. Amidst our Easter fun, they got SO much done, and with little whining (a rare occurance, indeed) - the girls helped empty the dishwasher (twice... we were rather behind on dishes), emptied all the little trash cans, cleaned the clutter out of the van, picked up the loft area of all their toys and such, set the dinner table, picked up toys in the backyard and swept the back porch, and cleaned their bedroom.... plus did quite a bit of weeding. What a task master I was today! :) So, to reward them along the way we did some fun things - like dying Easter eggs...









And, later, we made these cute little bunny bookmarks. The kids colored them, and then Emma cut hers out on her own; I helped Becca... in the end, honestly, they weren't that cute... Becca colored hers completely in red marker and kept saying she wanted hers to be an "angry bunny". What's up with that? And Emma just drew a face on hers... she said she wanted her bunny to be white, so she didn't want to color anything else. They turned into rather weird looking bunnies - but we finished them, and the girls are using them to mark the place in their current reading books. Oh, and Jake was alive today, btw. He colored a bunny too... but with crayons - he's officially banned from all markers... does anyone want to come over and repaint our walls? Jake's created little marker masterpieces on many of them.

Lastly, we made these tumble bunnies. Oh my! They ended up being so fun! The girls raced their bunnies over and over and over... and entertained themselves with them for almost an hour... and even when they were done with the tumble bunnies, they ended up hopping around the house pretending they were bunnies for a while after that. I love that! In the video, you can also see that Emma is a cheater, and Becca apparently doesn't care. :)

Candy, Butterflies, and Carrot Cake

Becca had her preschool Easter party yesterday. I took Jake too, and even Ben got to be there because he ended up with an unexpected day off! How awesome is that?! Jake also got to egg hunt, which was so fun for him - there's a big difference between a 1 year old and a 2 year old at Easter - he really seemed to embrace the candy hunt idea. :)



They had been watching the life cycle of a butterfly over the past while in preschool, and today they got to let them out and some of the kids even got to touch them before they flew away - in this picture, the butterfly made a quick exit! :)



My cute boys watching the festivities





Chasing after eggs!




Mommy and Daddy just can't help but get involved in "helping" the kids with their candy... we both may or may not have eaten quite a bit. :).....









My cute Ben had his 31st birthday on Tuesday! His special day was simple, but I hope that he felt loved nonetheless - I took him a big Costco cake to his work around lunch time to share with his co-workers at noon conference. Ben said it was really fun and everyone sang Happy Birthday to him. :) For birthday dinner, we tried out a new recipe that Ben picked out - Spicy Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches, with some coleslaw and asparagus. I liked that it was a slow-cooker recipe! (although it did require a bit of effort prior to the slow-cooker part)... we had enough for two dinners (love that!), and still have a bit of the seasoned shredded chicken left - maybe good for tacos, I'm thinking? Then we opened presents - Ben got some clothes from me (and I seem to have actually got him clothes that he likes this time, AND fit him! That never happens); the kids all picked something out for him too - Emma got him a new card game, that we played together after dessert, Becca got him a package of golf balls, and Jake presented him a bag of pretzel M&M's. :) I made a carrot cake, which is Ben's current favorite. We decided to really light the cake on fire and put on 31 candles - it took us quite a while to light them all! :)


I love this guy so much! I'll spare you the cheese and refrain from listing "31 things I love about Ben"... but know that I could at least think up 32! haha. And next year, Ben, I'll be joining you in the cool 30's club, and we can BOTH be awesome. :)
Happy Birthday!

Ladybugs!

Becca had her very first 'friend party' yesterday, and I'm thankful it went so well - We didn't start prepping till the night before (it was a late night), but Ben and I had been thinking about it for a while - I really enjoy throwing fun little kid parties, but I'm always relieved when it's over! :) I saw THIS post a while ago and thought it would be the perfect fit for our little lady. So, on to some pictures (I miraculously kept my spending below 30 dollars for everything, including the food, so it's obviously much more simplified from the gorgeous display tables on the link I saw)...



Red Velvet cupcakes (yum!)... Ben helped me cut out circle pieces for the cupcake toppers and I just taped them to some toothpicks

Becca's birthday flowers... Ben always gets the girls flowers for their birthday... he decided on red tulips to match our table... isn't he so great that he would even think about trying to match the color scheme? I married GOOD. ;)

The party favors - REAL ladybugs! I had to call around a bit to find them, but soon found a local nursery that was selling them - they are good for gardening because the ladybugs eat other bugs (like aphids) which are bad for leafy plants - and I KNEW I was saving those old baby food jars for a reason! haha





Ladybug activities:
1. Colored ladybug pictures as kids arrived
2. Split into two groups and rotated to the two activities - I did the craft table, where the kids decorated antennae headbands, and Ben was in charge of the game... Becca had received a Ladybug board game for her birthday, so we most definitely wanted to use it for her ladybug party too - the kids seemed to really enjoy it.


3. Ladybug leaf walk- the kids flew from one leaf to the next (I cut out the leaves from green felt) and stopped when the music did. Each leaf has little holes cut out of each (like a bug ate through it!); I'd call out a number, and if they had that number of holes in their leaf, then they'd get a ladybug sticker.


4. Storytime! I read The Grouchy Ladybug, by Eric Carle to the kids and then they got to look through other Eric Carle 'bug' books (like The Hungry Caterpillar, and The Very Busy Spider) and talk about their favorite bugs - I learned that boys really like ants and girls like butterflies :) I wasn't sure this activity would go over well, but the kids were extremely attentive during the story... see?...


5. Pin the spots on the ladybug - Ben kept spinning them many many times and then would send them off in the direction of the kitchen... I felt bad for them, so I steered them in the right direction :/






Then we did presents and cupcakes... Becca wanted to do presents first, but she was patient and waited till it was time. :)






The last of the activities was to send the kids in the backyard to play with some real ladybugs! This went over pretty well... a couple of the girls (including Becca at one point) were a little nervous of all the ladybugs crawling all over the place - they kept taking off and flying around and would often land in the kids hair or on their legs - I thought it was hillarious! :)






So, Becca felt very special getting to have her friends over for a party just for her! She gave me a big thank you hug and kiss after everyone left... aw, so sweet.

Oh, and the kids finished up their first session of swim lessons on Thursday. When I first signed them up, I thought it might not be warm enough yet for swimming, but they all seemed to be just fine in the heated pool. Jake did fantastic until the last day... for some reason on the final day he did NOT want to get in the pool - he started crying as soon as I went to walk him over to his teacher. He's had a cold this week, so maybe it was related to that? I have no idea - he ended up spending the time sitting out with mommy and eating snacks while we watched the girls. A few pics from the last couple swimming weeks...






I'm hoping to sign them up for another session or two during the summer... it will just depend on this baby on the way and whether or not I can manage it. We have an induction date planned for May 19th, btw. If she comes as early as Jake did though, then it may happen before then - we'll just see - it'd be nice to get this big baby girl outa me! :)