Spring Break

This week Katie and I were off for her spring break. We kept very busy with errands and house projects and she enjoyed laying around watching cartoons in her PJs, but nothing very photo-worthy! I did take this one photo of her after she had "styled her hair" using some squares of fabric that we purchased for a craft project. The weather was nice so we were outside quite a bit and on our one rainy/cold day we went and painted pottery with one of Katie's friends.


On Friday night we went to a baseball game and enjoyed watching from the suite with some friends. The kids loved the food and snacks!


And Caroline enjoyed her first pop from a can- what a treat!
And here, she's still enjoying it!

My friend Ricia and I enjoyed "pops" of another kind from a bottle!
Katie was happy to be head of the girls club!
Scott, Griffin and Ricia had fun and got a kick out og Griffin pretending to drink the beer.















Andrew and Courtney and their three girls.



Kelly, Eric, Jacob and Morgan.

The game went into extra innings, but we left after the 10th, which got us home at about 11 . . . a late night for us.
Saturday morning, the girls started swimming lessons. Caroline was particularly excited since she has been waiting for this day for a year. She did well and followed directions, although I did notice her creeping along the wall off on her own. And being near the water slide, but not able to go on it was torture for her!


Later on Saturday afternoon, Jen, Billy, Hannah and Emma arrived for a visit. The girls were very excited to see their cousins and wasted no time vying for Emma's attention.



After some "rest" time, the girls played in the playhouse. We took a picture that kind of reminded us of the one of Jen and our cousins when they were kids http://kgl2003bjl9.blogspot.com/2008/05/playhouse.html

The girls kept busy inside and out, playing baby dolls, house, school (with Katie being the teacher, of course).

We enjoyed their visit and Caroline wondered all day yesterday why they had to go.

We enjoyed our first outdoor meals of the season yesterday, which was nice.

After nap time, Jamie and Caroline took Lily to the dog park. As Jamie tells it, Lily didn't do much, but Caroline kept very busy with the dog agility equipment! Perhaps we'll have to enter her in some competitions . . .

Happy Easter

Katie's spring break began with Good Friday off from school. We had her friend Annie over for a playdate that afternoon and the girls had a fabulous time. Katie had been telling me that she and Annie needed to get together to practice their singing and dancing, so I was ready for an entertaining afternoon. They were very excited to catch the ice cream truck and enjoyed their gigantic popsicles.

After the gigantic popsicles, they were so sticky they had to change into dresses . . . and then they needed to put makeup on (isn't it lovely?) and then they sang and danced for me. It was quite a show!

On Saturday there was an Easter egg hunt at Katie's school. Some of her favorite friends were there, so she was excited to see them.

Caroline was in the 0-3 division, which gave her a clear advantage.

Here Katie and Annie were so intent on creeping forward in their runners' stance that the actually missed the "go" which ws ironic.

It was very windy at the egg hunt and by the end of it the poor Easter bunny had to hold on to its head.

After the hunt, we went to another park to play and have a picnic.

Here, Katie very willingly posed for a photo by some pretty daffodils.

Just as we laid out our blanket and started our picnic, it began to rain. At first we thought it would pass, but then it quickly started to pour, so we dashed to a shelter. Soon we were chilly and the girls and I had to wrap up in our picnic blanket as we finished our lunch.

That afternoon we decorated spring cupcakes (with our neighbor Miranda) for our Easter dessert and the sprinkles were flying!

On Sunday morning we were excited to see what the Easter Bunny had left for us.

Caroline was delighted with her first Barbie doll (she's been asking for one for a month straight).

Katie was thrilled with her new scooter.

And, of course, Caroline was ready to dive into the candy!

She also received a set of play golf clubs.

After our brunch we went to mass.

Right after this photo Katie took a tumble and she went to church with some fresh scrapes on her knees.

After church we had an egg hunt in our backyard.

Katie took off for the far edges of the yard and Caroline grabbed all of the ones from the patio.

Then we kept busy playing outside, while Katie tried out her new scooter.

Then the girls cracked open their new bubbles.

Lily was a huge fan of our Easter dinner and was very attentive while Jamie cut up the ham.

Her patience was rewarded with a giant bone, which kept her busy in the backyard for an hour.

This was an embarassing moment for Lily . . . if you look in the distance past the fence you can see a little bunny rabbit watching her and she never noticed that he was there!

Katie kept very busy with her new electronic password journal and enjoyed borrowing my iPod to try out its speaker feature. She loaded up all her money into its secret compartment and then thing weighed about 5 pounds. The journal's "voice" comes with a British accent and we found it very amusing when Katie asked us what the "Poss-wohd" was!

We enjoyed the day and were thrilled to have a 70 degree and sunny Easter. Both girls were delighted with their things from the Bunny and managed to work in a lot of opportunities to eat candy!

Easter Activities

This week we began our Easter preparations with a trip to the YMCA for the annual egg hunt. They had activities in the gym and the girls did a number of craft activities, while we anxiously awaited the start of the egg hunt.

Jamie coached Katie who had a pretty competitive field and I worked with Caroline who had her bag completely filled and there were still eggs to be picked up. Apparently, I directed her to a bad area because when we opened her eggs about 10 of them were filled with the same blue (boyish) plastic ring, while Katie had more candy. Perhaps she should get a better coach, since my stay in one area and pick up all the eggs from one place strategy meant getting little variety in the prizes! We have another hunt next Saturday, so we'll try again.

The kids had fun and after it had rained all day Friday, we were happy that the sun was shining.

We had to work hard to get the eggs untaped!

That night we went to a "Spring Fling" at the country club that we are joining. This was our first event and the girls had a ball. We quickly figured out that the event was for the kids and most of the parents were next door having dinner and drinks, but since Caroline was too little to leave unsupervised, we spent most of our time being extremely entertained by the dancing. Caroline loved the hula hoop contest and Katie found that she knew several girls from school and several girls from her gymnastics class there, so she was very busy running around with them.

On Sunday we dyed our Easter eggs. Caroline quickly got to work and dumped an egg in every available cup, and then jammed a second on top (pictured here).

Katie, on the other hand, carefully dipped half of her eggs here and half there, being very careful and artistic about it.

Jamie stole their eggs and wrote secret messages on them with the white crayon (i.e. "Boys Rule, Girls Drool")

By virtue of her technique (all eggs ended up in the orange dye at the end), Caroline had a lot of similarly colored eggs.

Katie left some of hers in for ages and got some very dark blues and greens . . . and as you might guess, we are eating a lot of bluish hard boiled eggs!

On Monday, Katie and I made some Easter candy. Here Katie poses while decorating her lollipops.

I guess we're reay for Easter now!