Spring Routine

Spring has come and now we've transitioned from our winter routine (lots of indoor crafts) to our spring routine - wake up, errands, park, lunch, park, rest time, outside, dinner, outside. I never knew that any day over 50 degrees could be so delightful. It really helps that we live so close to 3 large parks and can take advantage of them. So dear family, our photo-taking has plummeted and behavior has benefitted and I'll take the trade off.

A lot more puddle jumping

We actually had one afternoon that it reached 70 degrees so short sleeves and the water table made their debut appearance for the year.

 

 Coloring the deck in chalk just before a rainy day

 

She did her hair herself.

Another trip to Crayola with friends. They're sporting bunny ears.

Dress up in this house has gone to a whole new level

Daddy let Amelia "paint" with the iPad one morning. We found that she was "teaching" Austin how to use it. (The niceness lasted about 10 minutes - surprising!)

The perk of being a helper making Nutella cheesecakes one morning.

 

Enjoying his treat later that week

Watching sister sleep on the monitor

 Amelia's first family drawing. Patrick calls us the "Potato Family".

Just a little Go Fish with this card shark.

Amelia has a tendency to fall asleep near the end of her rest time allotment, sleeping until dinnertime. On one rare occasion, her best bud Brown Bear could not be found, so she went to sleep with Brown Bunny.  While Austin and I were playing downstairs, he found Brown Bear and was THRILLED to have a chance to play with him (He's normally off limits). He's putting him to sleep.

These kids empty the dishwasher every morning for me (silverware and kidsware). They used to have their own special jobs, but they've taken to "helping" each other - Austin passing the silverware to Amelia and Amelia passing the kidsware to Austin.

 

He Is Risen Indeed!

Some photos of the fun we had during the week before Easter.

Amelia and I did a little Easter egg dying during Austin's naptime.

Then later that night we did more dying with Daddy and Austin.

On first pass, these photos aren't very good. But all together they crack me up. Just typical photo taking of a preschooler and toddler.

 

Hope you got a chuckle out of that.

 

A little cross painting project 

Cutting out and baking Easter cookies

 

When Martha & Jim came to visit, she had sewn the kids Easter outfits.

We attempted another photo shoot. Again, the series makes me laugh. 

Boxing each other out. Austin has learned from the best.

Sweet hug that quickly turned into a chokehold.

 

But he retaliated with a tackle later on.

 

We were going to take the photo shoot outside. Then realized it was still much too chilly for their basic outfits. Side effect of living in the North.

Attempted some family photos. Alas, no good photos of Daddy with the kids. But Daddy got a few of me with them.

Self-timer - not too bad

We frosted the cookies after naptime on Easter Sunday.

While these photos show a lot of the crafty/baking fun we had, this was the first year I felt that Amelia "got" the Easter story. Maybe just can recount it, but that's a start to understanding. There were lots of tough questions this week - "Mommy, why would they put a crown of thorns on his head? Wouldn't it give him owies?"  "Mommy, who rolled the BIIIG stone away from the tomb?"  And some sweet revelations: "Mommy, Jesus is my king. But it's hard to obey sometimes. But He can help me. I love God. "

May these simple truths grow deep in your heart, sweet girl. They are still true for me too.