wordless wednesday

Easter morning at Madison House (with blake's grandmother and family).

kaylee on a swing

my most recent favorite picture of kaylee. at the park a week and a half ago. :)

and because I always seem to like sketches of kid photos... (courtesy of photoshop's photocopy filter)

10 on 10

10 on 10 is a thing that bloggers do. and by bloggers, I mean, my friends that are bloggers and apparently some other people. You can check it out and find more about it here, on the site that started it all. The basic idea is that on the 10th of the month you take 10 pictures, one each hour for 10 consecutive hours. I've never done it before because I generally don't realize it's the 10th until too late. I probably won't remember in the future either, but today I went swimming with my friend Brianne (at 6:30 am), and after our swim (at 8:00am) she snapped a picture for her 10 on 10 post. and I said to myself, "self, you should do that today." so I did, sorta. I mean, I got 10 pictures of today, and I aimed for on the hour... we'll just call it close enough. :)

anyways, enjoy my 10 on 10 set!

8:00 am (technically 8:21)
when I came home from swimming the kids were playing on the rocking horse we picked up at the EMOMs consignment sale ($8!) and gave them for Easter. Ethan was doing side-saddle for awhile, and here he's trying a different technique.

9:00 am (technically 9:47 am)
time for an adventure! we're off to farrel mcwhirter park. it's actually very near our house, but we've never been. the weather's good and the EMOMs recommended it, so we're going to try it!

10:00 am (technically 10:27 am)
checking out the chickens. there were also pigs, a rooster, a cow, sheep, goats, a turkey, a cat, bunnies, etc. the kids got to pet a sleeping pig. :)

11:00 am (technically 11:07 - pretty close that time!)
on our way out of the park we did some running around on the grass. here kaylee's running w/ her tongue out, just like blake - it cracks me up!

nap time (technically 1:53 pm)
kids are sleeping. I did some work (seemed inappropriate to show screen shots of me emailing about HR things) and then I had a little lunch of egg-salad which I made with these easter eggs. then I wrote my most recent blog post until the kids woke up.

3:00 pm (technically 3:10 pm)
during the nap my camera flash apparently died again for no good reason I can tell. so from here on out most of my pics are blurry and/or dark. but I thought this was an okay waking up from nap-time picture.

4:00 pm (technically 4:07 pm)
mommy, I am hungry. I am standing by my high chair saying, "sna? sna? sna?" please stop taking pictures and feed me a snack.

6:00 pm (technically 5:48 pm)
blake came home and took the kids for a run. I noticed that the tree I've been suspecting may be a cherry tree in our backyard is indeed a cherry tree and started to bloom just this morning!

7:00 pm (technically 6:37 pm)
blake is back. we're having a nice dinner out on our deck with our new hand-me-down deck furniture from my parents (and recently repainted by danielle) Thanks guys!

9:00 pm (technically 9:11 pm)
I tutored for an hour and a half and blake put the kids to bed. Except then Ethan got up. So Blake found a kids computer game and was teaching Ethan how it works. It's very rare for Ethan to wake up after he's gone to bed and we've never let him "play" a computer game before, so this was a special treat. Now he's back in bed and sleeping soundly.

So that's my day! Check out my friend Jo's day here and my friend Brianne's day here. Or, check out lots more here!

Heidi's bday (part 1)

part 1 because, let's be serious, I'm not going to finish this post during naptime!

Heidi's birthday was the day before Easter. We planned to have dinner together that evening to celebrate her, but then we thought, heck, let's invite her and Bruce to do the whole day with us! And they did!

It began with swim lessons at 9:00am. We've been to the pool a few times before with the kiddos, but this was our first "lesson". We never get any pics because both blake and I are in the water with the kids, so Heidi kindly got my keys from the locker room to unlock the car to get my camera out, and bruce took pics!

Ethan liked the noodles. kaylee did not.

look, kaylee had some fun.

ethan liked the rings. kaylee did not.

Ethan liked floating on his back.

Kaylee absolutely hated being on her back and tried to curl into a ball and hang on to me for dear life.

under the noodles! both kids liked this part.

nursery rhymes while sitting on a floating mat.

by the end, kaylee decided she liked sitting in the middle of the mat best. quite courageous of her.

she also liked jumping out of the water a lot.

next it was off to the City of Redmond Egg Hunt! Swim lessons were 9-9:30 and the Egg hunt was at 10, so we went directly, and appreciated Heidi and Bruce's help in the locker room - they both got the job of blow-drying the kids' hair. :)

before the horn sounded for the "hunt" to start.

each kid found one egg. yep, one. there were A LOT of kids at this egg hunt. it probably lasted 2 minutes - they each picked up one egg and then we went to look for more and there just weren't any; they'd all been picked up by other kids. the kids weren't upset about this at all, so it was totally fine, but I was a little surprised by how fast it went!

there were multiple egg hunts for different age groups in various fields. The easter bunny was in the fire truck overlooking it all.

whoa. a fire truck. pretty cool.

and, that's what kaylee thought of the easter bunny. :)

fortunately, grandma heidi was able to calm her down.

and that's the end of nap time, so more to come later!

Easter & Egg Hunts!

Happy day-before-Easter Everyone!

Seeing as how this is a blog about my kiddos, for pre-Easter I will share pictures of some of the kiddos' pre-Easter activities!

First off: The EMOMs Egg Hunt
Overall, this was a lot of fun. There was a bunny (an older twin or maybe the older sibling of a twin, I'm not sure) and lots of crafts and snacks at the beginning, and then we split into age-appropriate egg hunts. Being 19 months, our kids went to the 0-24 month egg hunt. audria's kiddos, who were 21 months, were much cooler and went to the 24-?? egg hunt. They totally made the right call! We had done some egg hunt rehearsals at home (with eggs filled with 2 goldfish crackers each - a big hit), and the 0-24 month egg hunt was more of an egg pick-up. just a room with eggs on the floor. There were however two cars (exactly like the ones we have at home, but one was a different color) and the kids were more interested in those. :) But, Audria said her kids were more interested in the playground (the older egg hunt was outside) so... perhaps we wouldn't have been interested in eggs regardless. But still, definitely fun, and free! (we had to provide 24 stuffed eggs beforehand, but all the food and crafts were free and we took home more than 24 eggs because apparently some kids didn't show).

this is our best easter bunny pic.

the next one looked like this, and the next one, had we taken it, would have showed kaylee crying. they (and especially kaylee) are not easter bunny fans.

but the easter bunny did give out fun little pin-wheels. fun to eat...

and there were bunny ears to wear. and temporary tattoos (hard to see, but there's one on kaylee's hand there)

and the egg hunt. we started off by putting a few eggs in our baskets...

but very soon, we were just interested in the cars.

well, with breaks for eating chocolate with the foil wrapper still on of course!

soon most other kids had cleared out. there were still PLENTY of eggs...

and the easter bunny came to visit.

but really, we were just interested in the cars. :)

Next up, the Gymboree Egg Hunt
Our gymboree membership was just for a month, and I figured that meant the month of March. But apparently it meant March 7 (the first day of our class) to April 6. So we went to class on Tuesday of this week and they told us that, instead of Open Gym on Friday, they were having an egg hunt! It was free and we weren't doing anything, so we signed up! These eggs were slightly hidden (some on the floor, some in tunnels, some under blocks, etc) but they were mostly empty. This time we were in the 10-22 month age group. I guess in each age group there was one non-empty egg that contained a paper that got you a free month of gymboree. That would have been cool of course, but we didn't find that egg. :) At the end, each kid got to take home one prize - I avoided the sugar items, and we went for glowing braclets. The kids thought they were pretty neat.

--also, the picture quality is about to decrease here. After the EMOMs egg hunt blake put the camera on top of the car and left it there when he drove off. So... it was in the shop for awhile and these next pics are with the old camera. they don't look THAT bad, but that's because I didn't post the crazy blury or grainy ones. But, it makes me love and appreciate my new camera even more... --

gymbo the clown was there and kaylee was less scared than I would have predicted. I think here she's thinking, "hey, you look an awful lot like that teacher lady that I saw earlier..."

yes, ethan's pants are sort of falling off here. right before gymboree we went to the grocery store and I gave the kiddos fruit squeezes as we walked back to the car. ethan spilled his applesauce all over his pants and whoops, there were no pants in the diaper bag! (well, there were, but not that would fit him anymore, I guess we need to update our back-up clothes in the diaper bag). So I swung through a consignment store that was nearby, and picked him up another pair of jeans for $3. apparently the waist was a little big, because they kept almost falling off!

after the egg hunt there was a circle game, but my kids weren't interested and I wasn't interested in making two of them do something they weren't interested in! gymboree is actually great about this, they do their activites and you can participate or not and it's not looked down upon if your kid just wants to keep doing the slide over and over.

we did another egg hunt today and I was going to blog about that too, but now I'd rather sleep. So I'm off to bed now. Happy Easter in the morning!