I love to dye Easter eggs and as much as my husband hates it, it's one tradition I cannot let go. You've just gotta have hard-boiled, colored eggs to eat on Sunday. This year was kind of a last minute, thrown together, chaotic, messy ordeal but craziness be danged we did it! (And actually Kris did most of the work, boiled the eggs, got all the dyes ready, etc.)
They had to eat all the broken ones...
On Easter morning the kids wake up and find their hidden baskets. Matthew's took the longest to find. Appropriately, the hardest to find since he is the oldest, if you ask me.
The after church boiled Easter egg hunt:
Matthew was feeling a little too old for this stuff. Sniff, sniff. I knew it was coming...
It's so hard to get a good picture of everyone these days...and I missed getting one of them in their church clothes.
Then we had family dinner with cousins over. We were lucky to have Neils and Tara and Wes in town. We missed Michelle and Britny. The cousin picture was a bit of a joke, this was the best we could do...(all five of my kids were present, however!)
Then to finish off the night we had a great big, huge, plastic, candy-filled, cousin Easter egg hunt in the back yard. With probably hundreds of eggs. The kids all had a ton of fun.
It was a beautiful Easter, I was happy to be able to spend it with lots of family and I loved getting to go to the Easter pageant earlier in the week. I also got to teach the Easter lesson in our primary class. Phew, was I tired by the end of the week!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Best $9 I've Ever Spent
This is Colby on his no-pedal bike. We first saw a little kid riding one of these in Yellowstone a few years ago and thought it was the funniest and coolest thing we'd ever seen. So I checked them out on the internet and discovered that they weren't cheap. Like $80 and up, so I pretty much wrote it off 'cuz as cool as it was I didn't really want to spend that on a little kid's bike.
Then at Christmastime I was shopping at Target and I happened upon this little beauty (unassembled in a box, of course) on a shelf and had to double check the clearance price tag of $9.08 because I could hardly believe my eyes. I could not believe my good fortune! And Colby was instantly in love! He rides this thing everywhere and he's dang fast, too. Picture a pregnant lady chasing (literally running full out) this guy down the street because he can go so stinkin' fast. And it's great for balance. I swear he'll be riding a two-wheeler before Rex. I was really hoping Rex would be able to use it but unfortunately, the balance bike is too small for him.
I would highly recommend this to parents of young children and actually I think you can find them cheaper now. The original price on the one I got at Target said it was $40 and I just looked on Amazon and found some that were $50. I've been more than happy with the one we have (and so has Colby).
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Disneyland Part Three
All good things must come to an end and so our trip sadly did. But we were sure to make the most of our last day. We went back and forth between Disneyland and California Adventure about three or four times. We convinced Matthew to go to Town Hall and make his birthday phone call to Goofy and get his birthday pin. By the end of the day he was kind of embarrassed by all the employees wishing him a happy birthday, but secretly I think he liked it.
We explored Bug's World at California Adventure.
These guys wanted to ride in the Chinese leftovers box. 
While the rest of us rode in the applesauce container.
For some reason Rex wanted his picture taken in front of the Tower of Terror even though he refused to ride it. 
We rode Monsters, Inc. a time or two. Colby loved that one. 
We ran into these guys after Turtle Talk with Crush, which was pretty fun because Owen and I both got to talk to Crush. And this time Colby was ok with getting his picture taken with Woody, maybe it was because I was holding him. 
Then we ran into Handy Manny. He's pretty cute, I kind of have a thing for Latin men. 
Later that night while waiting for the World of Color show to start we went on Toy Story (finally) and rode the carousel. 
After the show we went back to Disneyland to live it up a little more. One of the most fun things that we did on the whole trip was ALL ride the Matterhorn together. It is officially Colby's first roller coaster and it was so great to have our whole family do it together at night on our last day. We also hit Pirates one more time and Indiana Jones, Matthew was pretty excited because he got to be the driver on his birthday. We were so exhausted at the end but we really wound up having a great time, in spite of all the rain. Monday, April 4, 2011
Disneyland Part Dos
We started off day two with some Buzz Lightyear Astro Blastin'!
Then off for some Astro Orbiting fun! 
Then some undersea adventures with Nemo. 
Some of us had fun riding Dumbo. 
Others did not. 
Colby threw his hat into the water below Dumbo, lucky for him I was able to fish it out after the ride was over. 
Then over to California Adventure for some Grizzly River rafting fun. This was another of Rex' favorite rides. It's so fun when they are finally tall enough to ride some of the really fun stuff. 
King Triton's Carousel provided many fun rides for the little boys while everyone else got to enjoy Screamin'. 
Rex took this pic of me and Colby. 
Colby and I finished off the night at the Mad Hatter while we were waiting for the gang to get done riding some big kid ride. He picked out everything he tried on of his own accord. I just took the pictures.
He was really in his element in this store. He loved it.
Gracie as the Mad Hatter himself. 
Friday, April 1, 2011
Disneyland Part One
During spring break we took the kids to California to celebrate Matthew's 12th birthday. Kris had been promising this to Matthew for a few years (Kris really just wanted to go back to Disneyland and he thought he needed a good reason).
Line 'em up. I think it's funny how Gracie looks like the oldest now since she is the tallest. Hopefully, Matthew will pass her soon. 
Colby wanted to do anything involving the water so when he saw the canoes he made a beeline for them. The line was short and we had never done it before, everyone had a lot of fun. 
Everyone wanted to make a sugar straw (I have no idea what they are called) and they all had a lot of fun filling (and eating) them. 
While the big kids were riding Indiana Jones, the little boys and I had some fun at Tarzan's Treehouse. Rex wanted to go up twice and I was pretty worn out after all those steps. 
Rex and Colby just "monkeyin' around" at Tarzan's 
I think this is my favorite picture of the whole trip. Who doesn't love some Mickey pretzels? 
We always love Small World, after all. 
While all the big kids rode Big Thunder Mountain (Rex' favorite, by far) Colby and I hung out at Big Thunder Ranch. He would not go any closer to this huge cow and he kept looking at her and then at me with this look like "I ain't going any closer Mom." 
Colby was also too terrified of Woody to get in this picture so Matthew and Gracie posed. 
Colby did, however, enjoy the merry-go-round, of course. 
A favorite moment of the trip for me- letting these two watch the fireworks show from our hotel window after their bath. They loved it (and we didn't have to fight the crowds). 
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