Easter 2014

 We had a great Easter again this year! The kids were so excited to go to bed on Saturday night -- poor Harrison was up till almost 10pm, he just couldn't get to sleep his excitement over what the Easter Bunny would bring was that strong.

They woke up early to find baskets filled with goodies! 

 Madeleine's basket

 Harrison's basket

 Charlotte's basket

 Since they were up so early, we had plenty of time to go through their baskets and then find the eggs that the easter bunny filled and hid around the living room. It was nice to have such a lazy morning -- the kids played, I got my easter ham in the oven and we took our time getting ready. Perfect!

This girl was most excited, I think, about the foam that she got for the bathtub!

 Harrison's lego movie shirt was one of his favorites things in his basket!

 Madeleine loved all her books and her AG magazine.

 All dressed and ready for church!

 After church we came home and ate our yummy easter lunch -- ham, mashed potato casserole, green bean bundles, strawberry salad and rolls. Then it was time to head outside to find the eggs that Matt & I had hidden! The big kids were ruthless. :) We had a "time-out" minute so that Charlotte could catch up. Ha!

Then we came back in for dessert -- strawberry pie and banana pudding. Sooo good! The rest of our afternoon was nice and lazy, the perfect ending to our family easter day.

First Dentist Visit

Charlotte had her first dentist visit last week! I'd been talking it up for several days and trying to make it sound exciting. Madeleine was going in as well, so I was hoping that she'd think it was a "big girl" thing to do!

She did great! I was so thankful! With little ones, it can really go either was sometimes. :) And, Harrison had a really bad gag reflex that made dentist visits really hard and I was really hoping that Charlotte would not have that -- and she did amazing! They all loved her in there (of course, right?!). She let them clean her teeth and take some x-rays. The only thing she wanted was for me to sit by her and hold her hand. No problem, sweet girl!

She had no cavities which is great too! She has a crazy bite like Harrison that we'll have to watch and eventually fix, but for now all is good. One funny thing -- when the dentist came in she put something all over Charlotte's teeth and from then on Charlotte kept saying "that girl with the ponytail put yucky stuff on my teeth." Yes, that "girl with the ponytail" that spent years in school to become the dentist. Ha! I guess she wasn't impressed but certainly remembered the ponytail and the yucky stuff.

We ended up having to wait on Madeleine for a bit and Charlotte happily sat by me and played with some blocks. It could not have gone any better -- and as an added bonus, Madeleine was cavity free as well and she got her spacer taken off too!

Getting Ready for Easter

 We've had a fun week leading up to Easter! Last weekend our church had a cookout/egg hunt at our minister's house. The kids had a BLAST! They had the egg hunt, then some games for them to play and a bounce house & tire swing too! It was the first full day that Matt was back from his trip, and we'd only planned to an hour or so, but we ended up staying over 3 hours! We all had a great time and it was such a good chance for Matt & I to get to know some families from church even better. It always seems like it's hard to really get to talk at church while keeping an eye on 3 kiddos, so this was some much needed fellowship for Matt & I!

Miss Fearless loved that tire swing. She'd take a turn and then get back in line to go again.

 We have such a great crew of kids at church! I'm so so thankful that our kids have made friends so quickly. It makes my heart so happy to hear them talk about their friends and that they absolutely love to go to church! I keep thinking lately how that God has taken our (very prayerful) decision to change churches and blessed it immeasurably more than we could ever have imagined.

 After egg hunting and games, it was dinner time. We roasted hot dogs, ate chips and finally got to roast marshmellows over an open fire. I think Harrison was in little boy heaven!

 This is the one picture I got of Madeleine. I barely saw her while we were there -- she was off playing with her friends and they are big enough now to play/eat/play on their own. I did manage to snap this one of her roasting her hot dog with her friend Charlie. She talked all the way home about how much fun she had with the girls.

 We finally got around to dyeing eggs. The kids always love this, and it's always a mess! :) This year Madeleine and Harrison's favorite thing was putting those little shrink wrappers around the eggs. I supervised, but let them do it themselves. We ended up with more wrapped eggs than plain ones.

 The kit I bought (from Williams Sonoma last year on clearance -- it was great!) came with tons of cute stickers and markers to decorate with as well. The big kids loved the markers, but Charlotte's favorite was the stickers. She is big into stickers right now -- give her a piece of paper and several sheets of stickers and she's happy for as long as the stickers last.

We are gearing up to hunt eggs again tomorrow and feast on our Easter dinner! Yum!

Sonic, Fun and Friends

 We had a great day today! I feel like I'm finally caught up from Matt being gone alllllll week last week and Charlotte and I were ready to get out and have some fun today. Our first stop was Sonic to celebrate Tax Day -- can't pass up 1/2 price drinks all day long.

 We had to run a couple of final errands to get ready for Easter this weekend and then we headed to Charlotte's "happy place" -- the tumble place a the mall. She would spend every morning there if I would let her!  We ended up with a last minute playdate with Whitney when they met up with us there. The kids played and jumped while Whitney's mom Sharon & I caught up. After tumbling we headed over to McAllisters for lunch (because we needed a change from our usual ChickFilA). The girls were so good and we sat in the back and talked almost until time for us to go to tumbling.

Love these sweet girls!

We left lunch and headed back to the mall for Charlotte's tumbling lesson. I keep promising myself that I'll do an entire post on her crazy tumbling skills. I even took my big camera to get some good video today. But, right now they are working on front walkovers and honestly it's just not too exciting to watch. :) Joe told her today that since he's only giving her a "little" spot on the back handsprings on the mat, she's ready to do her back handspring on the trampoline on her own so that was pretty exciting. They also did a really neat round-off back handspring drill that she loved so I have a feeling that we will be up there practicing that some this week. :) 

The rest of our afternoon was pretty normal -- picked up the kids, homework, dinner and then I got the kids ready for bed while Matt tutored a high schooler from Farmington. 

Tomorrow is Hump Day! Almost Easter weekend!

March Wrap UP

 We had a fun packed spring break this year! The kids spent the first few days with my parents in LR and had a blast! It was so great for them to have a special time away and man, did I really need those 2 days alone. :) Matt was working like crazy on his dissertation and I'd been with the kids pretty much nonstop for days and just needed a bit of a break. It was so great for all of us and I'm so very thankful to my parents for keeping the kids for those 2 days.

After meeting my parents 1/2 way and picking up the kids on Tuesday afternoon, we filled the rest of the week with fun and friends and some good ol' down time at home. We played many, many games that week. One of our new favorites is Clue and what goes better with some nighttime game time than ice cream!?

 Harrison's class celebrated the 120 day of school. Counting to 120 is the first grade standard (although Harrison can pretty much count as high as I can) so the dressed like they were 120 years old. Harrison kept joking that all he really needed was a skeleton since that's all that he'd look like at 120. Ha!

 First grade at OC also did their program -- after having to reschedule due to weather twice we were all excited to go and see Harrison perform! He did great and it was super cute!

 Madeleine and I spent one day of spring break hanging out with the Scogin girls -- I love the sweet friendship that she and Lindsey have and I'm so thankful for these girls!

 Harrison was more than happy to stay home that day and work on his new Lego city police station. He'd been working to earn it for several months and was thrilled for it to finally be his! Notice the chart in the background -- all those Xs mean nights of going to sleep without fussing/getting up and staying in his bed all night long alone.

Painting Eggs

I got the idea this year to have the kids paint fake eggs for Easter. I thought it would be a fun project that we could hopefully do each year and I could keep all the eggs in a pretty container and add to it each year. It will be fun to watch their creativity grow and change from year to year and so this year we started this tradition. I had bought a package of 8 eggs and so Madeleine & Harrison both got 3 and Charlotte did 2. They loved doing this project! It was a hit!

I'm going to put their initials and the year on their eggs so I can keep up and remember which kiddo did which egg each year. Love adding new traditions to our family!