Easter 2014

We loved celebrating Easter at my parent's house. It was always a special holiday growing up and it was great having the whole family together for a couple of days.


Egg Dying

The kids were very excited for dying eggs. Nana went all out and got several kits so they hand painted each egg. One kit even had mini rollers. They turned out very cute. Lorelei's were mostly rainbow tye-dye looking and Makin's were mostly different shades of green. Brad painted a car on a green egg for him so that was his favorite. It was so amazingly quiet while they were both working so hard on their painting. Both had tongues out most of the time since they were concentrating so much on their artwork.

Lounge Time

Lorelei had fun fixing up Nana's hair as well as coloring and playing Littlest Pet Shops (from the old days) with Aunt Heather.

Piano Time With Nana

Tractor Tire Pics. Gotta Love 'Em.

Family Time At The Hooker Grill

Easter Morning

They were so excited to find their Easter baskets.

And now begins the Easter Photo Shoot Pictures...I didn't know if we had time for pics at church so we took before and then again outside. :)

Lorelei loved how twirly her dress was. :)

Can't you see the pics with M and AJ in  years to come as he gets taller? :)

Church Egg Hunt

Loved our visit! Thanks for a wonderful time!!!

Texas Friend Time

We had a wonderful time visiting friends. I determined I would actually get pictures of the grown up friends too, not just the kiddos this time. :) We are very much in the, "if you take a good smiley one, then we can take a silly one" picture phase, so you will see at lot of those this trip. 

The Hughes

Disclaimer on top photo, they threw a ball and snake at us when we were attempting a pic. And, the pic by ourselves wasn't that good so you have one with us and our cuddlers. :)

The Armstrongs

The Burkes

The Rogers

Amanda and John organized a glow in the dark egg hunt for the night we arrived.
The kids loved it.
In the bottom right pic they are being robots while waiting for John to hide the eggs.

We were so blessed to get our little friend trip in before our Easter visit with my family.
We sure miss these faces!

Visit to Edmond

Even though I'm usually a practical person, we took a trip last week that was not necessarily practical, but good for the soul. :) Since we planned a trip to my parent's for Easter, it wasn't TOO crazy to make it longer and visit Edmond and Dallas. Because Brad is able to work from anywhere, he worked some on the drive and then hopped to different coffee shops while we hopped to friends houses. He basically did it for the kids and I as he knew it would make us happy to see everyone again.

Our first stop was Aunt Heather's! We were very excited to see her new, spacious two-bedroom apartment. :)

They both brought their own stuffed elephants and then added Heather's two for a fun batch of cuddle buddies for bedtime.

The kids were excited to wave palm branches at church on Sunday and bring them to the front with the other children from the church.

Lunch At McAllisters

Giggle Time

Park and Short Walk

We got a chance to see Grandma Juanita. It had been way too long and we were glad to get to see her new living space as well. She is a close family friend who was one of our "adopted" local grandmothers.

Pool Fun After Arriving In Frisco
Lifting One Is Harder Than It Looks, I've Tried :)

Spring!

The temps are starting to cooperate a bit more this week and we have really been enjoying it. As long as its warm enough, we get to the park every day. Sometimes we head out in the car to a special park (like in these pics), but usually we go the one down the block from our house. We can go there no matter how many kids we have and we are so thankful to have it close. We miss our backyard swing set, so this makes up for not having it just a little. :)

We were thrilled to see a whopping 80 degrees in the forecast for Wednesday!

Bubble Time

We did some Easter crafts and activities this week as well.

It is amazing how much kids love this game! :)
On Pinterest there are different variations for each holiday.

Egg hunting. One color egg for each child. Brilliant!

Egg carton lunches - so fun!

We had some special school activities for Easter as well. Jelly bean graphing and egg sight words were especially fun. Makin is keeping up with his big sister pretty well. He asks to do school work with her if she does it when he is awake. He was enjoying the file folder number games in this pic.

I'm not pushing reading right now, but saw this idea on pinterest and thought it was fun. Plus a certain girl is very eager to learn to read so it's hard not to get excited. :) So proud of our girl!

Weekend In Kearney

Karter is the one in the fur hat.

We headed for another Stahl get-together in Kearney over the weekend. We enjoyed getting to watch Hannah and Karter perform as well as hanging around with Grandma and Grandpa in between performances. We even got to see their old college stomping grounds as that is where DI was located. It is much easier to keep Brooklyn home so we missed seeing the newly-turned one-year-old but can't wait to see how much she has grown sometime this summer.

There was a carnival the kids enjoyed after the shows. They loved all the different games!

We had hours of swimming that afternoon/evening and then swam again the following morning. Lorelei and Makin even tried jumping in for the first time!

Thanks for a fun weekend!

First Lost Tooth

Miss L has been asking "When am I going to loose a tooth?" for about 3 years now it seems. :) Ever since she heard about it she has been dying to loose a tooth. The big moment finally came! After our initial shock (and my mom and google reassuring me its a normal age to loose a tooth) we were so happy for her. When you see Lorelei, she will probably say, "Guess what, I lost one tooth. Eating an apple." :) She tells everyone and anyone she sees.

So, to tell the story, we were in Omaha because Brad had to fly out early (this is why they are in a hotel room) and she was having a quick apple after swimming and bath since supper was worn off. She took a couple of bites and then suddenly held out her tooth and said, "Whats that?"

I just loved them hamming it up for the camera for me. :)

She also loved calling Nana and Grandma to tell them the big news.

Checking out her hole in her mouth in the mirror. You are probably wondering about her cheek, the same day she ran into a pillar at the mall. She was not watching where she was walking. No relation to the tooth being lost. :) 

She was very excited about the tooth fairy coming. I was a little concerned as I had a whole plan of making a special envelope that hung on her bed, which of course we had not done yet and certainly could not do at a hotel. But the tooth fairy made her appearance despite the circumstances. :) Lorelei had the idea to write her a note. "I lost one tooth." She was elated the next morning and got a very special dollar since it was her first. She thinks that means the tooth fairy turned her tooth into the dollar and is not planning to part with it anytime soon! :)

Hodgepodge

The last few weeks life has not felt very blog-worthy, plus I think we all have the winter blahs which makes it hard to get motivated to do much of anything. So, this is what we have been up to...because of course I wouldn't go two weeks without taking a picture. :)

We made a small dent in our giant to-do list over a couple of weekends, including getting Makin's name up on his wall...only 3 1/2 years late. :)

Fun With Blocks

The calendar says its spring, and although the temps don't agree, we have done just a few spring crafts. A fun and easy idea I found was painting flowers with marshmallows. :) They turned out super cute and the kids had fun making them!

Fun Artwork By Lorelei

Before bedtime, after books, Brad and I spend 15 minutes (If they earn their 5 bonus minutes, which was a genius idea, they loose their bonus minutes if they continually call us for things after we leave, like water, another blanket etc. Evenings are much more enjoyable now.) with a child. We take turns each night, so they get mom every other night and dad every other night...hope that makes sense! Anyway, they can choose how to quietly spend their time with us (we talk, cuddle etc) and for a few nights we ended up looking at videos from the blog. The evening pictured was a Tuesday night because Brad has a Bible Study so I had them on my own. I'm not big on computer time, but think we will make it a certain day of the week since they were having so much fun looking back at themselves when they were little! And wow does it make me teary to see how much they have grown up. They loved watching videos of themselves from the different ages we found. I'm so thankful they can easily look back and see all of that. It was so precious and I know it makes them feel good too.

Lorelei is still working hard on her school work. She has mastered letters and loves spelling things out. She even started sounding something out without me talking her through it the other day, which was awesome. She no longer skips 13 when counting so I'm totally pumped about that. She does not want to master identifying her numbers and just wants me to teach her to read. :)

I feel like I have been able to breath a sigh of relief at this point. The letters seemed to finally "click" for her so I'm just taking it slow and trying to make sure she enjoys learning.

Brad had to fly out of Omaha for work, so the kids and I spent a few hours at the zoo. Highlights were the butterfly house and getting to touch starfish!

Magna Tiles...hours and hours of Magna Tiles. Thank you Melissa!!! :) I strongly encourage any of you reading this with children to put this on your Christmas/Bday list. They are not cheap...have Grandma get them for you! :) You can order them online or at a specialty toys/education type store if you call around. I cannot explain how much they love these. Today, for example, other than story time and a little bit of coloring/cutting all the played with all day were the magna tiles! Endless amounts of creativity here. Oh, and if you cannot tell, they need me to take many, MANY pictures of their creations before they want to knock them down. This isn't even half of what I've taken this month.

Tea parties. These have been a bit hit, especially with the girls we babysit. Nana got this little set for Lorelei and they are loving it. Often Thursday mornings we spend a long morning snack time having a tea party before story time. Their tea is water and they can pour it themselves. We also have to use tiny food to fit on the plates and talk in fancy voices. :)

Blanket Tents. Enough Said.

Spring could hurry up just a little. It really could! :)