Easter

Easter was really fun this year!  The kids are finally old enough to enjoy the egg dyeing (as opposed to The Frog's first Easter, when I ended up sitting alone, dyeing all the eggs myself.  fun.)  I tried to show the kids the trick where you color on the egg in white crayon and then when you dye the egg, the crayon part stays white.  They all took it a step further and colored with all kinds of colors before dying them, which turned out to be a great way for Hazel to be able to participate too.

 Since we have 9am church this year, I made everyone get dressed for church before opening their baskets and searching for eggs.  Here they are waiting for daddy to come down (and I'm sad to say, they didn't actually wait for him all the way.  We didn't realize he had hopped into the shower).

 This is just a funny shot.

 Our kids get super spoiled because they get a basket from the Massachusetts easter bunny and the Utah one :)  Because I know this, I always try to go low-key, but I think I got a bit carried away this year.  on accident.

 The bunny ears and tail were in the dollar section at Target.  I couldn't resist!

 I at the last minute, decided to host Easter for whatever local family didn't already have plans and so my little sister's family and parents came down.

 We took many many photos of all the kids together, and believe it or not, this was the best one.  (If I got a nickel for every photo of my kids with thumbs in their mouths...)

 These little dolls are something I started last year intending to be for easter, but as usual, I had too much going on and I had to bag them for later.  I thought about trying to finish them for Christmas, but all my spare time went to the quilt for my mother-in-law, so I finally got them done in time for Easter this year.  They are topsy-turvy dolls!  One side they look like they're ready for a fancy event, and if you pull their skirt over their head...

 they're dressed in their everyday wear.  I think they turned out so cute!

 The hair is probably my least favorite part... it was annoying to sew and I'm worried it's not going to stay in.  Only time will tell...

Peach wanted to be in the photo once she saw what I was doing.  However, the dolls went into quarantine right after I took these photos because we had just discovered that Peach had LICE.

EW.

It was super disturbing to see those little bugs crawling in her hair, and even MORE disturbing to see how many eggs were in there.  We are so lucky that nobody else seems to have gotten it.  (where SHE got it, I have no idea...)  Needless to say, my spring cleaning got a huge jump-start that day, since I had to wash pretty much everything in the house that could be thrown in the washing machine and vacuumed everything else.

We're still on red-alert around here, but so far so good :)

Sorry to end on such a yucky note.

Picture Catch-up...

I realized today, when scanning through our photos on the computer, trying to decide which one to make an ornament out of for Peach, that I have hardly any good photos of her lately!  She has been very camera shy/active (i.e. blurry!) in all my recent photos.  Also, I've been taking much fewer than usual...  Anyway, out of nowhere, my princess girl has suddenly wanted to start wearing her brother's clothes.  (try to ignore her peeking bum.  It can be hard keeping 3T pants on, but The Frog's 5T ones are impossible!)

 She even wore his pajamas to bed that night!

 Don't worry, though, she still has days of multitudes of princess tutus!

 I think I have a picture like this for all three kids at about this age:

 I make the babies wear these when I grind wheat.  That thing is super loud!

Ever since Auntie Eve has moved to Utah, we've seen a lot more of her and the cousins!  Usually, things are too crazy (or we're too busy chatting...) to get many pictures, but I just thought it was so cute seeing these two together, that I couldn't resist.  Hazel usually goes for the eyes, but little E is a good sport about it.

 Hazel absolutely LOVES playing peek-a-boo.  I don't think her siblings ever got this big of a kick out of it, but I'm known for having memory problems... My favorite thing about when she plays is that she considers this amount of face coverage to be hiding.

Adorable!  It's really really easy to tickle her into a giggle fit too.  Sometimes a picture just isn't enough...

And finally, I have this drawer of cookie cutters in my kitchen (that are almost all hand-me-downs) which is funny because I really hate making cut-out cookies.  **so tedious**  However, I've always been glad for it because it's been a favorite place for babies to go when I'm making dinner.

I'm getting really good an stepping over and around things while rushing around the kitchen :)  I wonder if I could put that on my resume...

Liberty Park!

After two other failed attempts at getting together with Natalie & fam while she was in town, we finally got together on Saturday, the day before they left.  I tried to meet up with them at the Tracy Aviary, but by the time Hazel woke from her morning nap, they were already done.  We decided to go on the rides just outside, and then head over to the miniature creeks splashing area.

Cousins L & C were brave enough to try the high swings!

The water place was awesome!  The kids had so much fun!  Probably more fun than the $2 rides... Unfortunately, I got ZERO pictures :(  And I also learned it's a good idea to keep extra clothes in the car whenever going far from home.  I will definitely plan on stopping by there the next time we go to the Aviary.  I ran to Smith's and we ate a little picnic in the shade.  So fun!  We miss playing with our Mass cousins!

My Nerdy 30!

This is a big year for folks like me, born in 1983... I kept going back and forth about whether or not I should throw something for myself and had kind of settled on not.  So I owe a big thanks to my older sister Natalie for deciding to come into town for a few days because she was the catalyst for this event that turned out super-fun!  I thought I could provide a way for the family to have an excuse to all be in town, while she was here, and so as many people I love as possible could be all together for my birthday :)

And how cute is it to celebrate my 30th on the 30th (even if it's not the real day...)

I, of course, needed to have some kind of theme.  I thought about "30 Flirty and Thriving" from that movie I love, "13 going on 30", but I don't really think of myself as flirty and nothing was coming to me.  So, I started thinking of other things that rhyme with 30 and, well, Nerdy was the obvious choice, if you know anything about me.....

I knew I wouldn't have time to do much, so I just picked a couple of things to tie the theme together.  I was trying to find a cheap, plaid table cloth, to no avail, and so decided on making my own argyle ones by cutting up those cheap $1.50 ones from Zurchers.  I admit, as soon as I thought of it, I was super excited to have an excuse to buy my own test tubes and beakers to put flowers on the table.  I obviously had to dye daisies (and then Costco had them, so I didn't have to dye them at all!)

I wish I had thought of this for our wedding!  Test tubes are CHEAP!

I was so excited to try out a recipe from a book my mother-in-law had, and I coveted, that Jay just got for me for no reason, in July (he needed to buy one more thing on Amazon to get free shipping.  Thanks for thinking of me, hun!) but we've been off sweets since we got home from our Mass trip and so I have held off, with much difficulty.

Do you know what my cake says? ;)

I knew one cake wouldn't be enough for 26 people, so I also made cupcakes using part of my birthday present- Demarle muffin tins and heart shaped pan.  Their nonstick bakeware is awesome!! Notice, my cupcakes have no papers on them?  That's because they came right out without them!

I've wanted to buy cute straws for some time now, and I finally had a reason to.  I hot glued little "bow ties" on them so it would look like you had one on when you drank from them.

i *heart* this picture

and it kinda worked...

Cousin C went to Hogle Zoo while in town and had a little giraffe-souvenir clutched to her side much of the party

plaid napkins!  I'm a big fan of fun napkins.  If your napkins are cute, you must be celebrating, to me.  (Which is funny, since their sole purpose is to get dirty...)

And my favorite- I got cheap sunglasses from Oriental Trading and popped out the lenses to make some awesome...

nerd glasses for all!! (PS like my owl earrings? Already had those...)

And finally, I had Jay look up a bunch of trivia questions whose answers were all "30" or "1983".  I was born in a pretty cool year!! Were you born the same year as the chicken McNugget and the original Nintendo Entertainment System?  Yeah... I was....  Oh yeah, and now I can be a senator.  So, be watching for that....

And, I obviously needed balloons.  Duh.

I grilled chicken and hot dogs and let everyone else do the rest.  We had soooo much food!  And it was all really good! :)

There were 13 Kids all under 8, only 4 of them were girls. There's no telling what may occur with a crowd like that, but it was actually really fun and not as crazy as I expected.  I had a great time!

I forgot that the easiest way to hang balloons is to tie them to the string and so we threw the ones we had prepped before on the trampoline.  (As soon soon as all the kids got on, they didn't last long...)

Eve decided to dress for the occasion

Retainer and all! :)

It's hard getting a picture of John when he's not pulling a face, so I thought I better post this for posterity's sake- Uncle John can actually look pleasant after all! :)

Thanks, Natalie, for being my photographer!  I know the event would not have been properly documented, were I also in charge of that!

The kids loved the Izze's.  I love that they are not sugary like regular soda.

binary candles

Nate prepping the gigantic bucket o' ice cream!

Wouldn't be a family function if John didn't do something to try and bug me... ;)

Uncle Nate saving the day and pulling grass out of a dropped cup cake :)

boys bein' boys

Melibindsay- making the nerdy librarian look good :D

I had so much fun celebrating my birthday!  Thanks for coming everyone!!