A Little Garden Work

With our temperatures climbing, we have been getting outside every day, with lots of running and races down sidewalks, playgrounds and all-purpose-rolling-around-in-the-grass. We are dirtier for it - but we had good naps every day this week! I'm not hauling the bulky camera on those adventures by myself with the kids, so you'll have to take my word for it.

A few indoor Easter-related activities this week - Easter stamping!

Decorating a flower pot, with the promise of flowers to be purchased

Snuggles with Daddy

Goofball faces at the camera

Every kid needs a little Starship Enterprise in their life, right?

Taking over Amelia's rocking chair

Listening attentively while Amelia explains the flowers she recognizes 

(she can identify dandelions and daffodils so far on our neighborhood walks)

Footballs are good for chewing. 

Did I mention that he cut two teeth this past week? TWO TEETH in one week. Oh my aching back...

Patrick has been waiting for the first nice weekend to cut out our back garden and do some landscaping. He worked during most of naptime and then his helper joined him.

Eating Easter eggs while watching Daddy work

This is her current cheese face

Progress slowed a bit, but Daddy sure enjoyed the help

They found various earthworms and they had to examine each one and then 'put it to bed'. Towards the end, she wanted to hold one so she did for about 5 seconds. But I was able to catch a photo of it and was impressed that she held out for the time she did.

Yay spring!

Crayola Weekend

Our shore friends came to spend the weekend with us (we think of it as an extended playdate). We started with our traditional Friday night pizza.

Girls making our pizzas

We opted to try something new to all of us - the "Crayola Experience" at the Crayola Factory. It isn't cheap and I was unsure if we'd get our money's worth. I did not expect there to be as much to do as there was.

Showing off the crayon wrapper she designed for the yellow crayon (her favorite color).

Making markers - her favorite part of the day. I think it was the flashing buttons she got to push.

Showing off her precious markers (yellow was involved in all of them!)

A little rolling/cutting/molding fun with Model Magic

Cheesy photo with dads

 Coloring via iPad

(Our crazy kid somehow figured out how to reset the system and end up in the app store. I'm pretty sure they block that ability.) 

These lifesize LiteBrite activities must be popular now; we've seen them before and they are a big hit!

Fun wall-of-Crayola-history

Cheesy shot with friends - love these!

There was even boats and water!

Painting (kudos to Crayola - they had large dryers so you could take home dried artwork!)

cutting/gluing fun

Drip art

We loved it so much that we went ahead and bought a family pass for the next year. I'd been looking for something that would get us through next winter when everything is dreary and wet and cold and I think we will be able to spend many, many days playing with Crayola's art supplies (and Mommy doesn't have to clean it up!) I think an older kid would get more out of it (there were other activities meant for kids with more coordination/attention span) but we might get to try them when it's less crowded on a week day.

Ryan and Briana's 11th wedding anniversary fell on this weekend and originally we tried to convince them to leave the kids with us for the entire weekend so they could have a staycation, but we compromised on a date night for them. So Patrick and I had fun with all four kids for the evening. We had so much fun!

(reality: Patrick had Austin and I took the older three)

After fun playing outside and helping Patrick grill and eat hot dogs, we did a "project" - making paper lilies out of hand prints.

This is how Patrick babysits Austin

They turned out pretty cute!

We ended the evening with a whole lot of dress up from Amelia's dress up trunk. Here is my favorite photo of the three of them. As a 6 year old, Delaney has the dress up thing down and was giving Amelia lots of pointers. I did give Ryan a hard time for teaching his son that the hard hats were "manly hats" since they happened to belong to me. :) As usual for all kids, they all went to bed without any drama or even a peep - too bad they never do that for their own parents.

Thanks friends for coming! Amelia hasn't stopped talking about you yet!

Teething Expresses Itself in Various Forms

I hear a clicking noise and this is what I find.

A little snack before drawing with chalk. Yay for warmer weather!

First time in the swing!

Apparently seven months for Austin is synonymous with rolling and moving. This boy is all over the place. Finding him stuck is now the norm.

Making Aunt Carolyn's M&M cookies - since we made them to take to Thanksgiving, Amelia assumes we are going to see her every time we make them. :) It's a wonderful recipe to make with Amelia since she can put all the M&Ms on the tops and truly participate.

Our weekly coupon cutting

There's nothing stopping him now!

 He's discovered the little books and he LOVES to "read" them and chew on them.

and he gets onto me for teaching Amelia kickboxing moves