Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was wonderful. The kids got out of school early on Thursday and we went to lunch and met up with some friends. The kids both went home with their friends and enjoyed the afternoon without school playing with friends. Friday Cade went to see the movie Soul Surfer. He said it was awesome so I took Maddi and her friend to see it Friday night. It was a great movie about a girl who had her arm bit off by a shark. She faced her fears and learned to surf again (amazing!) and was very inspirational. Cade had a sleepover with a friend and Maddi's friend slept over here.

Friday during the day, we died Easter eggs. You can see from their faces, the kids were all very excited for this annual event.


Emalyn wanted to be a part of it too, but I'm too anal to let her get dirty and die eggs, so she watched from her high chair. She wanted a crayon and colored a bit and then was silly and played peek a boo with us. She makes us laugh all the time.

I love that the kids know the real reason for Easter and enjoy all of our family traditions like dying eggs.

Maddi loves anything crafy, so she was very serious about her egg dying.

These are most of Maddi's eggs.

And these are Cade's. He enjoys it as well, but has a different approach to coloring his eggs.

I mentioned in my Easter post about how my egg boiling was a debacle. Maddi wanted to eat one before we colored them and cracked it open to find it was still runny. I boiled them again longer and they ended up not runny, but you can see how the yolk is still very yellow. Not the greenish-brown I'm used to seeing. The eggs cracked very easily if dropped, so obviously I needed to boil them even longer. Just don't ever eat any eggs that I've boiled!

Miss Emalyn made some funny faces for me...


...so fun!

Then she was being silly with her bubba and was feeding him crumbs from her high chair.

Saturday we had a nice, quiet day doing some things around the house and Emalyn enjoyed her time hanging out with Dadda. She even ended up falling asleep sitting with Daddy in the recliner. She hasn't done that in forever!

What happened to my baby, she is looking like a toddler!

These pictures are from Sunday, but on Saturday Brett told the kids he'd pay them 10 cents/weed if they'd pull weeds. We have had a ton of rain and the ground was soft so the kids were able to pull the weeds out pretty easily. They got to work and worked for a long time. They ended up pulling 400 weeds on Saturday! They even chose to pull weeds instead of playing with friends that called them to play. They each earned $20 on Saturday for pulling weeds. Sunday Brett negotiated a dicounted rate of 6.66 cents/weed pulled. I'm not sure how many they pulled Sunday, but a lot again.

They had fun and were happy to earn some money. Cade has been wanting a basketball goal. Brett and Cade started looking into them and realized they are so expensive! They ended up buying one Sunday night. Cade put his money he had toward it and we paid the rest of it and it's his birthday gift. Brett and Cade have been putting it together this week. Hopefully it will stop raining this weekend and he can shoot some hoops on it. Maddi is saving her money for an ipod touch. The 3 1/2 day weekend went really fast, but it was nice to have a low key weekend to spend time together as a family.

Easter Day 2011

It has been quite rainy here lately, so the Easter Bunny hid the plastic eggs inside this year. Cade woke up at 5:30 a.m. asking if he could go downstairs but I told him he had to wait in his room until his sisters woke up so he wouldn't see all the eggs and their baskets without them.

Sometime around 6:30, we were all downstairs ready for the Easter fesitivities to begin. Emalyn had no idea what was going on and pretty much only had drinking her bottle on her mind. I never got a good picture of the three kids on Easter day. Bummer. We tried several times...

Cade's showing off one of his toys in his basket.

Emalyn modeled her bunny ears just long enough to snap a picture. She wasn't a fan of the bunny ears, but she was so cute!

After seeing their baskets and eating a brownie and a Reese's peanut butter egg from their baskets, the kids were ready to hunt eggs. Emalyn had Daddy to help her figure out the egg hunting thing.

She's catching on and liking it!

Maddi and Cade left all the eggs that were down low for Emalyn to hunt.

She likes it!

Emalyn and Maddi looking at each others eggs in their baskets before moving on to find more eggs.

It was so fun to watch Emalyn's expressions when she found the eggs. She had no idea that there was anything inside them, she just thought it was fun finding the eggs and carrying her bucket.


More eggs!


Emalyn loved hunting the eggs until she was done. At one point, she just walked off and left her bucket and said "no, no" when Brett showed her another egg to pick up. So funny.

They found so many eggs, they were falling out of their baskets.

Another attempt at a picture with all 3 kids.

So much candy!

Emalyn has become a little obsessed with her "baba". She pretty much won't drink a sippy cup and will only drink milk from a bottle and it has to be warm. She'll hand the bottle back and say "more" if it doesn't feel warm enough. We're creating a monster! But...she's a cute little monster. Here's her little buddy, Cocoa, in on the fun too.

She had a taste of a rolo...

...we thought she liked it a lot, until she spit it out. She won't eat candy or cookies or cake or anything anymore. Weird.

After eating candy and breakfast, it was time for a little Nerf basketball in the foyer. Brett brought Emalyn over in her high chair to watch the game. Maddi provided musical entertainment with her recorder.

Maddi joined in the game too. Fun times!

Little one enjoyed the entertainment.

Brett was trying to teach Maddi the correct way to shoot.

Then we all got dressed and headed outside to hunt to hard boiled eggs. Emalyn was attached to Mommy at this point and had no desire to hunt eggs.

Maddi enjoyed the outside hunt.

Cade did too.

I got Emalyn to pick up one egg while holding her.

Then I put her down to hunt more, and that was the end of her egg hunting for this year!

The funniest thing happened. I don't know how to boil eggs. Maddi tried to eat one and cracked it open and it was still raw so I cooked them some more. They were still soft and a few broke when we were dying them because they were undercooked. Anyway, the birds went to town on the eggs and ate about 8 of them.

We found several piles of partially eaten eggs. Most of them were just parts of the shells that were left behind, the eggs were eaten. The shells were so soft that they were easy for the critters to get into them. I think we had some happy birds in our neighborhood.

My last attempt at a picture of all 3 kids. Failed. Emalyn really was in a decent mood, but she wanted nothing to do with a picture. She just wanted her bottle. I've always said I'm in no rush to take her bottle away from her, but maybe it's time?

Silly bottle, otherwise a decent picture of my 3 favorite little people.

Love how Cocoa jumped in the picture too.

Love that boy, Cade Forrest.

Love that sweet Maddison Shea too!

Thought this one was funny. Look how nice Maddi is sitting and Cade is so slumped down.

Maddi actually looks bigger than Cade here because of how they're sitting. The kids are lucky to have a daddy who loves them so much.

We almost got a picture without that bottle in the way, but not quite. I wanted to try and get pictures again after lunch, but Emalyn had food on her dress because she
wouldn't keep her bib on at lunch. Oh well, maybe next year...

Maddi hanging out waiting to go to church playing her recorder again.

And Cade killing time shooting some hoops.

We had a nice service at church and then went for a nice Easter brunch. It was a wonderful day. My favorite part of the whole day was sitting next to Maddi at church and hearing her sing the songs nice and loud. She has such a sweet voice and it made my heart happy to hear her praising God with it. The weather cooperated and it was even sunny for part of the day. We had a wonderful day celebrating that Christ has Risen!