Egg Hunting

This past Thursday was both Ainsley's and Bailey's class Easter parties.  This was Ainsley's first "off-site" Easter party and was really cute and a lot of fun.  Here is her class and the other 3-day three year old class lined up ready to grab some eggs!  You can't see in the picture but the field in front of them is speckled with lots of colorful plastic eggs.

Above is Ainsley waiting so excitedly to start picking up eggs with her friends.  This was her first egg hunt of the year and she had an interesting technique to picking up eggs.  She ran out and grabbed one, and then ran past three or four before picking up another one.  She then ran past several others, kind of getting caught up in the excitement of it all.  Then she found an egg that was broken open with the candy spilled out and she said, 'it's ok mommy, I'll put it back together.'  She then carefully puts each piece of candy back in the egg and tried to close it.  It was an irregular shape and she couldn't get it closed, so I encouraged her to just put it in her basket and move on.  But she was so set on fixing it and spent the next several minutes trying to put it back together while the rest of her class ran around and picked up all the other eggs.  And then the hunt was over.  Poor girl only got three eggs and one of them was broken.  Thankfully some of the eggs were redistributed to make numbers more similar.

Here she is with some of her class besties... Taylor, Sophia, Emerson, Gigi, and Ainsley.  It was sweet to watch her play and interact with these little friends that I hear so much about.

 Then here's Ainsley with her wonderful teacher, Ms. Harrell.  "I love Ms. Harrell" she says.

After Ainsley party was over, we headed over to Bailey's school for his party.  I'm not sure how we will handle it when their parties overlap but I guess I'll worry about that another day.  Above is Bailey in his bunny ears.  He was surprisingly pretty excited to wear them until he realized that there was eggs and candy involved and then the ears got quickly discarded.

Bailey's egg hunting technique couldn't be more opposite than Ainsley.  It makes me laugh thinking about the contrast especially since it was highlighted with their parties being back to back.  Bailey went at the egg hunt with focus and determination.  He quickly realized that if he set his basket down, then he could run and grab two or more eggs at a time.  He made several of these "runs" to and from his parked basket and accumulated quite a few eggs!

He even managed to open a few eggs during the hunt, pop in a few pieces of candy, and move on to get more eggs.  He was on such a roll, even quickly swiping eggs that other kids were clearly on their way towards, that we had to reign him in a bit so that the others had a chance.  It was so hilarious to see the differences in these kiddos personalities.

I love these two pics of these sweet kids.  Only wish Bailey was looking at me, but wouldn't you know he is still trying to scope out more eggs.

Here is Bailey and his two teachers... the first is Ms. NaNa (Naomi) and the second is Ms. Mary.  Bailey adores both of these ladies and gets excited whenever we mention their names.

I'm so thankful for both of these kiddos sweet school programs.  Even though they only spend a few days a week at each of their schools, it has been such a blessing to them and me.  I feel so fortunate for the positive experiences it has given both of them, not to mention fun parties like these!

Egg Dying

This week we dyed eggs for Easter.  Ainsley dyed eggs last year but this was Bailey's first time doing it.  He was pretty impressed and of course drove right into the process with reckless abandonment, dunking the eggs from one color to the next.  But miraculously he only managed to spill the dye once.

Ainsley on the other hand was careful and thoughtful about the process, waiting patiently for each egg to turn the appropriate color.

About 15 minutes and a few dashes of glitter later we had our finished products, along with Bailey's 10 little blue fingers.  I have to admit that I was surprised they got done so quickly.  The eggs took so much longer to change colors in my own childhood memory.  :)

Car Washing

 A few weeks ago Bailey and I spent our solo morning together working at the car wash (yeah!).  I filled small tupperwares with whip cream and chocolate sauce and gave him a few cars to drive through the "mud" and then clean off.  He was hilariously serious about it and worked hard for quite a while.  Above is the only picture I could get of him actually looking at the camera.  He was just too hard at work to take a break - hilarious!

 

He was also funny about not really liking to get the cars that dirty.  In my head, I thought that would be half the fun for him esp since this boy is never clean!  But instead, I spent most of the time getting the cars messy so that he could clean them off in the water.  He was so precise about it all and would line them up on the wash cloth to dry when he was done.

This game was a huge success and he took some serious convincing ie. bribery to stop without throwing a fit.  We ended up going through and entire bottle of whip cream, half a bottle of chocolate syrup and then moved on to mustard.  Not as pretty but it was the only thing we had extra of in the fridge that wouldn't stain.  Oh and we probably wasted a lot of water.  Not something we will do everyday but lil man sure did have fun!

This dress

Ainsley 12/2012 - age 3.5

Johanna with brothers 11/1985 - age 3

There is a bit of resemblance in those two chubby cheeked toddler grins!  :)  When I showed Ainsley this picture and asked her who the little girl was she laughed and said, "That's Ainsley, silly mommy." In both these pictures, Ainsley and I are wearing the same dress that my mom and Ainsley's grandma smoothie made.  So fun!  Ainsley had a blast wearing it, twirling around in it, and being a cute, goofy girl.

These pictures are obviously from Christmas and I'm just now getting around to posting them.  But I wanted to be sure to include these sweet failed attempts at a sibling pic.

Fancy "Bag" Safari Hunt

These pics are from January sometime but I wanted to remember this fun afternoon.  The munchkins and I made fancy 'bags' (really the idea was to make purses but we are called them bags for Bailey's sake) out of paper plates cut in half and stapled.  They dazzled theirs up with fun stickers, markers and ribbon.  Then we went on a safari hunt to find animals that I had hidden in the living room.  Bailey had kind of a hard time understanding the animal hunt part but was happy to play along running back and forth and closing his eyes tight when instructed.  Ainsley loved it and made me hide the animals over and over and over.  It was a fun afternoon of giggles and imagination.

Safety frist...

... even when you are pushing.  :)

Spring Break

For spring break this year, we hopped up to Fort Worth/Dallas to spend sweet time with friends and to have a little family fun.  We had a great time but ended up cramming a lot of stuff into our trip, so it was also exhausting.  That said, my back only gave me minor aches and pains, which was such an incredible blessing.  I wouldn't have even dreamed of being able to make a trip like this happen last year or even last fall so even though we were a little wiped out by the end, it was still amazing to me to see how far I've come.  Praise be to God!!

Anyway, back to the fun stuff - as soon as we got there I dropped George and the kids off at our friend's house in Fort Worth and I went to Dallas to spend a few days with my bestie Mackenzie and her new wee one Henry.  He is a dream and it was so wonderful to be able to snuggle him and to be with Mackenzie.  She is already such a great mommy and has a lot of perspective that I lacked with Ainsley.  I am so grateful to have gotten to share some of these first few precious moments with her and her family.

Then back over in Fort Worth, we stayed with our dear friends Tim and Emily and their three boys for a few days.  It was almost comical going from the sweet stillness of Mackenzie's house to the loud and crazy circus of having 5 kids under 4!  But oh, was it fun!  And it was great to see how wonderfully our kids played together.  Here they are below on night at dinner.

Luke (3), Ainsley (3.5), Caleb (4.5), and Matthew (4.5)

Matthew (4.5) and Bailey (almost 2) - Matthew was so sweet to Bailey the whole time!

After dinner that night it was off to TCU to see all the new construction.  Sadly it has been quite a while since we have been back and it has changed so much!  The school has built a new student center, lots of new dorms and eateries, and a new stadium.  Everything looks beautiful but it is a bit nostalgic seeing our old stomping grounds change so much!  On the drive there we were explaining to Ainsley that this is where mommy and daddy went to school when we were kids and that this is where we met and fell in love.  She was so cute and quietly took it all in and then asked if she could go to school here too when she got bigger.  We said yes and then she asked me if I would come with her to which I said of course!!  Hope she remembers this conversation when she's older.  :)  Here's our pics in front of frog fountain...

We had such a great time with the Bates' and they are always such gracious hosts.  We feel so blessed to have such wonderful life-long friends such as these.  Here are some other pics of our visit...

Feeding fish, which Bailey LOVED!!

Ainsley and Caleb

And this was our last minute attempt at a group shot as we were all heading out the door... in front of the TCU golf cart no less.  :)  Matthew and Caleb are the only ones who truly participated but at least there is a glimpse of the other three.  Thanks Bates'!  We love you!

Our final stop was staying at The Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, TX which has an indoor water park and is a hotel completely catered to kids.  Aside from a family-wide meltdown (yes, George and I included) shortly after we arrived which was directly followed by a family-wide nap (and yes, again, George and I included), it was awesome and the kids had such a great time playing in the water and exploring the hotel.  The two pictures below are taken from the balcony overlooking the indoor water activities.  I didn't risk taking my camera down below and didn't want to buy a pricey waterproof camera, but the kid's excitement about everything was priceless!  I was so proud of Ainsley who was brave enough to go down the large winding tube slides all by herself (in the pic below they are the yellow and green slides on the left).  Both kids were however terrified of the giant bucket (top of pic) that would slowly fill with water and then randomly dump on the crowd below.

It is hard to see in this picture but this is the area designed for kiddos Ainsley and Bailey's age and it's where we spent most of our time.  The water was shallow and there were ride on water guns and small kid slides that both Ainsley and Bailey went down hundreds of times.  They were both so grown up and after going down the slide would swim/walk to the stairs to get out and wait in line to do it all again.  Poor Bailey was pretty chilly the whole time though and would just shiver and shake while standing in line.  Even though his lips were blue, it never stopped his enthusiasm.  And thankfully he has a sweet daddy who would often take him out and towel him off to warm him up.  In the back of this pic you can barely see the wave pool which Ainsley also loved!  The wave pool was my favorite when I was little too and her and I played lots of games of Ariel and the Sea Witch.

Then there was the arcade.  I'm not sure who had more fun here, the kids or George, because apparently some of Bailey's favorite arcade games include basketball and go carts.  Hmmm... :)

Bailey was so excited to see this critter and ran up and gave him a big hug saying yay, yay!  He is just like Ainsley in the fact that he knows no strangers... or at least no large fuzzy ones.

George and the kids watching one of the puppet shows after breakfast.  It was pure fascination for the munchkins.

And here we are in one of their photo opps to prove we did it.  You can see the sign but unfortunately George cut off the Bear's head.  :)

All in all, it was a great trip and great memories for our little family of four.  I'm so thankful both physically and financially to make things like this happen.  We are truly very blessed.