Easter

I love Easter :) We did our normal Easter Egg Hunt at the preschool which is always fun and not frustrating like all the other public ones I've been to - why oh why do I keep doing them?? :) After the preschool one we went to another one put on by a church at a park. We had gone to this one in years past and it wasn't terrible, so we thought we'd try again. BUT I think once and for all I'm done with them. I think the issue is when they offer nice prizes for the adults in some of the eggs, which I didn't know they were doing at this one until we got there. That's what seems to make the adults go crazy and the idea of them getting a gift card or TV trumps the kids having fun and the adults take over. Sammie was in her own area for the little kids and that one wasn't as bad. Gracie and Bradley were in the bigger kid area and pretty much got pushed out of the way by parents shoving their kids ahead of everyone else and then grabbing eggs themselves. And on top of the prizes, they didn't even have an egg limit so by the time we shuffled in there was nothing left. There is no reason at all for parents to even go in the egg area with older kids like that - they shouldn't even be allowed in there. We did our best to brush it off but it's a hard medium to find between sticking up for your kids and saying something to the parents that are pushing and shoving - and just keeping your mouth shut and talking to your kids about how that's wrong and we don't do that. Kevin is better at confrontation than I am and he and another dad had some words with one of the mean parents, and we just used it as a learning example about being kind and not greedy :) I'm so proud of my kids because we've gone to several of those throughout the years where you see kids and parents acting like that and never once have my kids pushed back or ran and fought for an egg. They always seem super confused about that behavior and they are always so kind.
On Easter morning we had a hunt here at the house, then we headed up the mountain and had lunch and another hunt up at Dad and Jan's house -which is always SO much fun!!! In my very pregnant and uncomfortable state I had to take lots of breaks and sit down on rocks and look around for eggs - but I made it work :) there's no way I was going to miss out :) I didn't even whip out my camera I was so on a mission to find some eggs :)

 This was my most favorite moment at the public egg hunt. Remember me saying that Bradley has a soft spot in his heart for any and all living things? We were walking away from the park and he saw this tree that was dead and it just made him so sad, he hugged it for a very long time. He's just such a sweetheart!

 Bradley drew a note to the Easter Bunny all by himself and it was adorable, so I had Gracie and Sammie do one too and they were the labels for the easter baskets this year :)

 Bradley is still super into his markers and he got window markers in his basket and went right to work. We still had stems left on the windows from the girls' party so he added some flowers :)

 They went outside and found a rolly :) and put it in an easter bucket and brought it inside and everyone gathered around to watch him walk around in circles :)

Butterfly Bazillion :)

So, this might be confusing - I know I'm POSTING this in November (!!! Where has the time gone??) but back in MARCH we went to the Butterfly Pavilion (or Bazillion as the kids call it) for the first time. Bradley is very into all things animal (or anything at all living for that matter) so he was really excited to see all the creatures and hold Rosie the tarantula. Gracie was excited too and said that she would hold Rosie too. When the time came down to it she is the only one that was brave enough - well she and Tammy :) I wouldn't do it, Kevin wouldn't do it, and Bradley got too scared. Even though, as I expected, as soon as we got in the car he was saying he wished that he got to hold her. It was a really cool place, and the kids loved it, so we'll have to go back again soon and we'll see if Bradley goes through with it this time :)

Party x 2

I've been asking Gracie for a while now if she would mind if she and Sammie shared a birthday party this year. At first she was against it, but after I explained that she'd still get her own cake and her own presents, I don't think she could figure out a reason not to. She picked the theme again - flowers. I think I took probably 100 pictures of the two of them for the invitation until I finally got a good one, I just could not get both of them to smile for the life of me, and I got tired of trying so I just picked the best of the choices I had. I think they had fun. I got little flower pots and had them decorate them with markers and stickers and then they could all pick out some fake flowers to put in there. They looked really cute. I'm pretty sure all the girls did one, of even two, for some reason the boys weren't very into it :) I had to grab Bradley from running around for 2 minutes to do one. Of course AFTER the party (when all his friends were gone) he probably spent a good half hour making a beautiful pot, he definitely takes pride in his work and takes his time. Of course a lot of the kids just wanted to squish the foam that was in the pot - that was more exciting :)