Easter Weekend 2014

So our Easter celebration started out with a little bit of bad luck: I bought an egg dyeing kit weeks ahead of time, but when we went to dye the eggs just a few days prior to Easter, we realized that the manufacturer had forgotten to include the egg dye tablets!  (WHAT?!  Kind of an important thing...)  I don't remember the circumstances, but I'm pretty sure that I was working the few days leading up to Easter and by the time I was able to go get another kit (thank goodness they still had them) we had maybe an hour to devote to dyeing eggs.

The reason I tell you this is that this little girl ended up practically doing them all on her own.  I had all of the stuff ready for her and turned her loose.

I think they turned out so well!  She continues to impress me every day!

I had Saturday off of work, but S was scheduled to go into work at noon.  This left us with enough time to take the kiddos to the city egg hunt again.  Boy was old enough to participate this year!

Shameless selfie with the cutest little iPhone addict I know...

So if you remember from a few years ago, we had to scramble for anything because parents were so competitive.  (If you remember, I was also a little ticked off.)  So this year I had Boy by the hand with my game-face on.  The fire engine alarm went off, signaling the beginning of the hunt, and I raced onto the field with Boy in tow and started shoving candy into his basket.  It was at this point that I looked up and realized that the rest of the parents were calmly making their way onto the field and urging their little tots to gather candy one piece at a time.  Great, now I was that parent...

Boy did pretty well and we left the field with plenty of candy still on it.

Bean was in an older age group, and thus on a different field, so I didn't get any pictures.  S told me, though, that she had a plan going onto the field: she ran to her "spot" dropped her basket in the center, and started making her way around her basket in a circular fashion, spiraling outward.  Brilliant.  She made a killing--it took a month to finish all the candy.

We had enough time when we got home to do our own Easter egg and Easter basket hunts.  All those rocks make great places for hiding eggs.  Plus I had some on the grass for Boy to find.  I think they had a good time.

The next day, S was working again, so I dressed up the kiddos in their Easter finest and we went to church.  I always love Easter Sunday.  There is something so sacred about being able to worship on the day that we remember Christ's atonement and resurrection.  The kids and I were able to go over to S's parents that evening for dinner and another egg hunt.  By this time Boy was getting pretty good at the whole thing.

(Side-note regarding Bean's clothing in the following picture: she is in a major Disney Frozen stage right now.  Since she doesn't have an Elsa dress-up costume, she improvises.)

His face in this picture says it all...

Spring has been bipolar here in Utah, as it normally is, but the glorious days have been, well, glorious and my kiddos have wasted no time making the most of them.  I have also really enjoyed the fact that Boy is up walking around this year.  It makes it easier to just sort of turn him loose.

One of our main projects this year is going to be to get the garden structured.  I'm not sure we'll be able to plant much but we want to at least get it ready to go for next year.  Part of our challenge has been that we made some mistakes when we were initially designing our terraces (more to come on this later, I'm sure) and part of fixing it included getting one of S's friends over to dig away the top section of dirt.  What was left behind was the perfect play area.  I'm pretty sure Bean thinks it's one giant sandbox.  Whenever we go outside, both kids spend the majority of their time up here.

One evening before S had to go back to work, we decided to roast marshmallows.  It was Boy's first time doing this and he loved it.

Here's to many more warm evenings with sticky fingers!

S's birthday (also known as how I failed)

(Okay, I know the title is a bit dramatic, but an explanation is coming, I promise.)

For S's birthday this year, we started the day off with ultimate excitement--grocery shopping.  I know, I know...  But it was actually so nice to have him there to keep Boy entertained!  The reason for cramming it in the morning was so that he and I could drop off the kids at grandma's house and go to a movie and dinner!

Before that, though, Bean was beyond excited to give S a present this year, and for good reason.  She was giving him an awesome Crayola Cinderella color wonder book which she told me was "just what he wanted!"

Boy was pretty excited to give him a present, too.  'Disney's Planes' duplo blocks.  I think we might need to address gift giving with our kids in the next few years...

Bean and S wasted no time breaking into his new coloring book...

...nor did Boy waste any time building masterpieces with daddy's new blocks.

Like I mentioned, we dropped the kids off early in the afternoon and S and I went and saw the new Captain America movie.  I love all of the Avengers movies, by the way.  And I'm not really all that familiar with the back-stories or the comic books, I just thing they are great movies--and this one didn't disappoint, either!  We've been trying this thing where we eat out at more new places, especially local ethnic cuisine.  But S ultimately decided on one of his favorite Mexican restaurants.  It was a great day!

Now on to how I failed.

I had asked S a few weeks earlier what kind of cake he would like me to make for his birthday.  He picked chocolate/chocolate frosting.  I was all set to make it that day (I had worked the night prior) but when we decided to go out instead, I was left with no other alternative than to make his birthday cake at a later date.  Which I did, and it was still delicious.  But sweet S made every effort possible to tell everyone possible that I hadn't even made him a cake for his birthday.  Next year, I am making 3 cakes for his birthday on his birthday ;)

March and April Dates

With the college and pro basketball seasons wrapping up, the obvious choice for our sports-themed date in March was 'basketball.'  I toyed with the idea of going to a Jazz game, but they are such a dismal team right now that even the ridiculously discounted tickets I could get seemed like a waste of money...

Then I thought we could watch the March Madness tournament while eating at a sports grill.  I also thought about going to a local park and shooting hoops--which led to the most brilliant idea of all.  I was planning on getting S a basketball hoop for his birthday anyway (which was only a few weeks away,) so one of my proposals was that we go buy the basketball hoop for our date, set it up, and play away in our backyard.  That's exactly what we did.  Although it took a lot longer to set up than we'd expected and we didn't really play much that night (the following picture was taken a few days later while S, in the middle of a rainstorm, was trying to fix a problem with the lever that raises the hoop.  What a good guy...)

This birthday gift/date has already paid dividends.  I tell S it was the best purchase we've made in awhile.  After the kids are asleep, (and if the weather is cooperating which this year it hasn't really...), we head outside and play ball until we can hardly see what we're doing anymore.  S is thinking of installing flood lights.  I'm sure our neighbors will love us.

My plan for our April date was to ride our bikes along the parkway, but it was going to be too hard logistically to do so with taking the kids to grandma's and wanting to go to dinner afterwards, so S suggested that we Rollerblade instead.  I cannot remember the last time I went skating.  It had to have been before we got married--and we celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary this year, so do the math.  My skates were a little dusty--and so was I--but just as our adventure was ending, I was feeling really comfortable again.  I told S that we have to go again soon so that I don't lose my skills!

The rest of the date was as fun as skating.  S had grabbed a football before we left, so we played catch for awhile.  We were in the part of town where he had grown up and we had fun remembering all of our memories of people we went to school with.  My plans for dinner fell through when we found out that the restaurant wasn't open until 6, so we went to Red Iguana instead.  It was both of our first times dining there--I have had takeout on several occasions.  The food was delicious, the company was great.  We capped off the evening with a trip to S's grandparents' house so he could make sure their sprinklers were working okay.  Like I said, what a good guy!