Celebrating Easter

This year we opted to stay in town for Easter since we had a lot of work to do in order to get our house listed.  Like, A LOT.  While James headed to Good Friday spin class, the kids and I decorated eggs.  Since they were still in their PJs, aka underwear, we just went with it.  Pants are optional at our house if you are under 10 years old apparently.  They even humored me by wearing bunny ears.  I'll take it since I know the number of years of bunny ears are limited.

Here is our basket of completed eggs.  I am surprised that the kids still want to do eggs. I'll take it!

This time of year always reminds me of James and I getting engaged.  It was Easter weekend and we had just colored eggs with James' family.  James 'stole' 4 of the colored eggs and used them to propose.  #romantic.  Not so romantic, it happened in the bathroom.

For giggles, here is a photo of James and I the night we got engaged.  I loved mint 13 years ago and I still do!

I have I shown you the new mint purse I bought at the end of lasts season for a killer deal??  They were practically giving them away.  I finally pulled it out this week and of course it snowed 3 times.   Of course.

When we weren't decorating eggs or eating chocolate we were cleaning, decluttering and packing.  Oy.  Not the way I like to spend the weekend but it had to be done.  This afternoon the pictures are being taken for the website and it should be on the market by the end of the week, a mere 5 weeks after we bought the house.  Good thing we weren't in a rush.

Every couple hours I would take a Mindy break.  I've become obsessed with The Mindy Project.  I liked it at first, but now I am addicted.  It makes me laugh out loud and is only 22 minutes long. Perfect packing break.

At the end of the weekend I had a garage full of our stuff, a tummy full of chocolate, and a full heart.  

Hoppy Easter!

Easter Weekend

For the Easter long weekend, our little possy headed to visit my brother's family and meet their 4th child, and first son, Kiptyn.

He is the sweetest little thing.  He was so quiet you often forgot he was in the room.  Except when you changed his diaper.  He got exceptionally louder when he was naked.

The kids were a little scared of him at first.  They didn't want to hold him or get all that close to him.  Grady asked me at one point why his eyes were open.  Well, because he is awake.  My kids do not see many babies so it was almost like a foreign concept to them.  By the last day they agreed to hold him and they were all smiles.  I can only imagine the trouble this trio of testosterone will get into in the years to come.

IF you look super close at Cooper's face in the above photo you'll notice he has a scab right between his eyes.  The poor guy took a stick to the face by his brother.  It was an accident that resulted in his first hockey injury.  First, but probably not the last....

Over the course of the weekend you would often find Grandma entertaining many kids.  Keep in mind that we had 6 kids (0-9 years), 6 adults, and a dog, all staying in one house.  There were lots of little people around needing entertainment and granny is great at it!  What you can't see is Madi running a connect 4 marathon at the opposite end of the table.

  This is what is what 10 people and a dog look like when they lounge around on a Saturday afternoon.  I am taking the picture, I have no idea where my brother is, and I am going to assume boomer the dog is either in the corner of the couch of following my brother around!  Once I took a harder look, I noticed boomer at my kids feet by the table hoping to get some crumbs!

Every time we get together with my brothers family we always pack our bathing suits because my niece, Madi, loves to swim.  This trip was no different.  We ended up at the pool one morning.  Aside from a water slide 'incident' with Grandma and Taiya, the trip to the pool was a success.  Grandma brought my kids each a snorkel set that she had laying around the house. Cooper's set says 'Disney Princess' on it.  Thankfully, he can't read.

This trip I loved how my little nieces opened up to me.  In the past, Tessa, this little brown haired beauty, wouldn't let me get near her.  Her older sister would tolerate me, but wasn't a big fan.

This time, the girls let me play with them.  Taiya even called me aunty once.  Made my day.  This is the benefit of these big family sleepovers, the kid have no choice but to get to know me since we invade each others personal spaces for the weekend.  I so badly want to develop a relationship with these girls.  I want to take them shopping and go for pedicures when they are older and do other girlie things I can't do with my boys.  That is what having nieces is all about!  

At least I know it will come.  Me and Madi started out slow, but now we crack jokes and this weekend we even had a ladies outing with Grandma, her, and me.  She is such a mini teenager!

One of my favorite moments was meeting baby Ben in the hospital and visiting with Carmen in the hospital.  For years, whenever a baby is born, all my friends head to the hospital to meet the new little one and shower the new mom with flowers and hugs.  They send a group photo to me each time.  And each time I feel happy and sad.  Happy for them, sad for me that I am not there.  I love these girls and always wished I could be a part of that tradition.  Thank you Ben for being born the day before good Friday and helping make my wish come true.  Carmen, you make beautiful babies!  Congrats!

I was very fortunate that my friends took time out of their family Easter plans to spend some time with me.  The weather was terrible in Saskatoon, terrible.  It snowed all day on Friday and these fine ladies (with the exception of Dee who lives out of the city) loaded their kids up at 9am when everything was frozen, literally, and came over to Sara's for a one hour visit.

That same night, after visiting Carmen and Ben, we went out for a fancy birthday dinner with lots of laughs and a little wine.  To the surprise of most, I ordered fish and to my surprise it came with the skin attached.  Weird.  It has been years since I was able to celebrate Dee's birthday with her and it was a special treat.  I am so fortune to maintain these friendships across the distance.  I am already looking forward to our yearly shopping trip in Edmonton. Can't come soon enough!

While Madi and I were out on our 'ladies outing', she insisted we stop by candy store at the mall that had this game she wanted to buy.  The game was sold out but she managed to get a refill box of for the game.  The just of it is that there are 2 jelly bellys the same color and one is good tasting and the other, not so much.  Two people each take one and you don't know which one you got until you ate it.  For example - there were 2 yellow jelly belly's - one was tutti fruity and one was barf.  James got the barf one and spit it out.  It was an interesting game to say the least.  Here is Madi handing out the candy.



We spent a good portion of our weekend playing mini sticks.  When asked what the kids wanted to bring to Uncle James it was hands down, the goalie equipment that the Easter bunny brought them the weekend before.  Over the course of the weekend, almost everyone had a chance to the goalie.  Seriously.

The most intense game we played was in Aunty Kolby's basement.  At one point it was 3 on 3 when one of the James played.  It was the perfect set up with a big clear concrete area to run around on.  No knee hockey there, it was full on running.  Grandpa Lorne was a pretty good goalie and gave the kids a run for their money. 

Grady asked me countless time why we didn't bring his roller blades to Aunty's house since it was such a big open space.  We don't have protective gear yet so up to this point we have been skating in our house.

I love this next picture.

I never in a million years guessed that the 2 little girls would want to bath with my boys.  It was quite the site.  At one point, Cooper stood up and said there was no room for him in the tub!  They stayed in there more than 5 minutes before all of them wanted to get out at once.  Go figure!

We finished the weekend off with an Easter egg hunt.  We had a LOT of eggs.  Keep in mind that we also had 5 kids that would be searching for them.  John thought I was crazy hiding all those eggs and it turned out that the hunt lasted approximately 2 minutes.  I could have hidden more! 

We ran into a little problem with Boomer the dog... I started hiding the eggs under things and he kept finding and trying to eat them.   Since we didn't want to deal with a dead dog in the morning we had to hide all eggs off the floor.  They were pretty easy to find just sitting on the counter!

I love the weekends that my family gets together.  Whether it be at my house, my brothers, or at my moms.  We have a full weekend to catch up on lost time from living in different cities.  But somehow you don't notice it has been months since you got together, it is like you haven't skipped a beat.  My brother picks on me, we both pick on my mom, we eat blizzards and watch big brother.  I couldn't have asked for a better weekend!

I hope every one's long weekend was a good as ours!

Easter

From this...

To this....

You guessed it, we decorated for Easter this weekend.  Grady has been asking to dye the eggs for a week!  The kids enjoyed it and lasted well over an hour before calling it quits.  We just bought the kits from Superstore for a couple dollars each and did our thing.  One tip, do the eggs the day before.  If you tell the kids it is time to do eggs and then start to boil them and prep, you won't actually dye the eggs for hours and the kids will lose interest.  It takes longer than you think!

We also decorated our Easter Tree.

James thinks is is silly but the kids (and I!) love it!  I've had it since University and it still hast he 9.99 Walmart price tag on it!  The kids were super excited when I pulled it out and it took a grand total of 5 minutes to decorate. It was well worth the effort.

Now to wait to see if the Easter Bunny will bring the goalie equipment that the kids have asked for.  Repeatedly.

Easter Weekend

This weekend was extra long for us.  I was off at noon on Thursday (which I responsibly used for grocery shopping) and James is off today as a bonus. Since I am off today normally it ended up being one extra day at home together....  except for the fact that I planned a play date not knowing that.  I figure it will James some time to work on his taxes :)

We started off Friday morning with a bike ride.  Since we got Grady his new bike a few weeks back, we get out when ever we can.  He picked it up really quickly and he really goes with confidence despite having a few spills mostly from going down hills to fast.  That is one of the problems living in our area - it is full of hills!

We were lucky enough to find the neighbor kids playing outside as we left for the park and they decided to join us.  We are very lucky to have a 4 year old boy a mere 4 months younger living right next door.  He has an older sister who Cooper just adores so it works out great.

Cooper has a strider bike that was unused by Grady for over 2 years.... but I'm not sure he likes it either.  He started off this season riding it, but now he prefers his plasma car.  He can go much faster on it ad keep up with the big kids, especially when they are going down hill!

After the bike ride, we spent the rest of the day coloring angry birds from the Internet, cutting them out, and taping them to the door.  After we removed all the Thomas ones from his door which he graciously agreed to give to Cooper.  

Saturday morning, Grady and I headed to an art class.  I have a budding artist on my hand who loves to paint, draw, and color more than anything else.  I was hesitant to put him in a 10 week art class as I wasn't sure if he would like the structured environment but I found a parented class that was offered this past Saturday and I thought why not.  It was Van Gogh's birthday and so we were to a draw a picture of a vase and flowers and paint it.

At first, Grady did not want to draw the flowers, he wanted to draw a scenery with a rainbow.  His words, not mine!  I convinced him that drawing the flowers wouldn't be so bad and he could make a rainbow vase.  With a little help he ended up with a 4 year old masterpiece.  I'm not biased or anything...

The art studio was fantastic.  They actually hung your canvas on the wall and the entire room was covered in paint.  Grady thought that was pretty neat.  He was also the only kid that managed to get paint in his hair.  I have no idea how that happened but it did look pretty cute and 'Easter-y'!

After the class Grady and I headed to best buy for a memory card for my new purse camera.  I thought it was a 'safe' store, meaning that there would be no tantrums because there was something he wanted.  I was wrong.  He spotted this aisle FULL of angry birds and I knew it was only a matter of time before he asked to buy one.

When he asked I told him we would come back with Cooper and the $20 that he put on the fridge the day before.

You see... when I was young, my Grandma sent us $2 for every holiday in a card through the mail even though she lived in the city and we saw her at least weekly.  I remember loving getting that card in the mail and now my mom has started that tradition with her grand kids.  Except they get $20.  Usually I put the money in their bank accounts and it is done with, this time Grady asked if he could buy something with the money and I agreed.

Long story short, we went to walmart, dollar store, and finally back to best buy to find something angry birds that Grady wanted and in the end him and Cooper fought over the same toy and the outing ended in a tantrum.  I think the money will just go in the bank again next time.

Easter morning started about 7am and Grady was very excited about finding the eggs.  Cooper toddled behind too slow to actually find any eggs on his own without being shown by James or I.  Even then sometimes he didn't see them.  He just enjoyed carrying around the few eggs he did find in his basket and watching Grady run around squealing with delight every time he found an egg.  Which was often since we hid 50 eggs!

I think next year I will buy eggs I don't like.  Today the kids have had a total of 2 eggs.  Both eaten by Cooper.  That leaves a total of 48 eggs for me to eat.  That is not good.

Both the kids are fighting colds and it became evident by mid morning that Grady needed a nap.  The kids have been going to bed later and later and getting up at the same time.  It had to catch up with him eventually!  James laid with him and before we knew it young G was having his first nap since I can't even remember when!

I had to document it!

While he slept, we got the turkey in the oven and prepped everything else as we had James' side over for turkey dinner.

Grady got up and within the hour Cooper was down.  With Grady being well rested we did some bubble blowing, courtesy of the Easter Bunny.

We decorated Easter eggs on the driveway for our guests to see on arrival.

We even made it for a bike ride where Grady was proud of himself for riding his bike standing up.  When you ride up as many hills as we do on our street you need to stand up every so often.

Shortly after 5 we finally sat down to eat... all 7 of us!!

Let me tell you that never happens.  Either the kids can't wait to eat and shovel in some cereal just before dinner, or Cooper decides he isn't hungry, or one of them is screaming.....  But today it did happen and I snapped a quick photo to prove it.  Grady didn't get his nose bleed until after dinner today.  So he missed dessert.

All in all we had a nice weekend.  Nothing eventful happened, we didn't do a whole lot, but we enjoyed the weather, we enjoyed the chocolate, and we enjoyed some turkey.  All in all, you can't ask for much more!

Hope your long weekend was as relaxing as ours!

Happy Easter

From my bunnies to yours..... 

 

I hope you have a wonderful day! 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Friday afternoon while Cooper slept (and James) Grady and I painted eggs.

We even wore our bunny ears.  It started off well and then I brought out the glitter. Oh... the glitter.  I don't think we are quite ready for glitter.  Or glue for that matter. 

But we were all smiles for the most part.  Grady was less happy about the bunny ears than I was, but he got used to it.

Happy Easter!

I called the Easter bunny.

Yes you read that right, last week I called the Easter bunny.

I was making supper when Grady comes running in asking if 'that bag' was for him.  I immediately panic.  I had left a bag of Easter goodies in the office that I may or may not have forgotten to bring upstairs promptly on my return home.  To my defence, I came in and put them in the office right away so the kids didn't see.  However, this happened over 2 days later.  I digress...

After my initial panic I think that maybe he is not talking about said bag full of Lightening McQueen loot.

Me:  Which bag are you talking about Grady?  

Grady:  This one right here.  

I ignore him hoping the issue goes away. It did not.

Grady:  Come here Mom and look.


I go in there and see that he is looking at my bag full of Easter treats.  oh crap.

Grady:  Is this for me?

He had a big smile on his face totally expecting that he was about to score everything in the bag.  Instead....

Me:  No


Enter Tears. He was really upset as big tears streamed down his face.  I thought about giving him one of the items but seriously this kid does not need anything new.  I used the distraction technique and got him finger painting.  He continued to cry that he just wanted the bag to be for him.  That is when the wheels in my head started turning....

Me:  Maybe you'll get them for Easter.


Grady:  From the Easter bunny?


Me:  Yes, maybe we should call him to be sure.

I grabbed my cell phone and called the Easter bunny.

Me: Hello Easter Bunny, it is Christy, Grady's mom

Pause.

Me:  Grady would like some Cars 2 balls for Easter.

Pause.

Grady:  Don't forget about the Cars 2 coloring book.

Me:  And also a Cars 2 coloring book.

Pause.

Me:  Thank you Easter bunny!  See you at Easter!

Seriously, the things you do for kids.

And yes, the bag is tucked away in my closet where it will not be seen again until Easter... Lesson learned.

Happy Easter!

Some

Bunny

Loves

YOU! Have a happy Easter!

Happy Belated Easter!

Better late than never......

We had a great Easter that started at home with a scavenger hunt (pictures not yet dowloaded) and setting up the train set that Nana got Grady for Christmas. Yes, Christmas. Until we had the basement finished we had no where to put the train so we opted to wait a few months and set it up right. We (meaning James) are not quite done though. The table is up and the train track just needs to be set up on the table. Grady and I playing with all the trains and a mini track while we watched James work. That is until Grady decided he wanted to help Dad. It was all downhill from there!

After nap time we headed to Nana's for Easter supper. Yummy....

When we arrived Grady got to do a mini egg hunt around the living room looking for chocolate eggs. He wasn't very good at finding them, but very good at putting them in his basket and carrying them around. You gotta start somewhere!!



Grady also went through the basket the 'Melmo' Easter bunny left for him at Nana's.



He liked the water wings for Maui best.

This was our best attempt at a family picture. Grady and I color coordinated. I tried to get James to wear blue but he wanted to wear his baseball jersey for the season openner. Can't say I didn't try :)

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Happy Easter! (UPDATED)

HOT OFF THE PRESS... Marla just emailed me some family pics she took for us this afternoon so I wanted to update the post to include them.

Grady and Mommy



The best family pic of many



One of numerous outakes involving Grady removing Dad's hat!



Original Post:




James, Grady and I are celebrating Easter just the 3 of us this year as Marla has the flu and Bo has a cold. We are all keeping our germs to ourselves :). We started the day with our first annual Easter Hunt where Grady got a lot of good loot. Then we headed over to Nana's for 'touch free' visit in our easter outfits. Grady is napping now and the lasagne is in the oven so wanted to post of few pics of 'Easter Grady'.

Hope everyone has a great Easter the the Easter Bunny brought lots of calorie free chocolate!

Hope you feel better soon Nana!




Reading his first clue in the Easter Hunt



Reading his new book 'Tails'




Grady and Iggle Piggle from the TV show In The Night Garden. If you have a child under 1 and don't know this show.. you need to check it out. I personally think it is stupid but Grady LOVES it!! It is on Treehouse at 5:30. Trust me.



Grady with his chocolate-free easter loot.



Check out a few more pics on the Picassa Link! Enjoy!