The two weeks between Easter and our big Disneyland trip were pretty much one big countdown. I answered the question 'when are we leaving' about 153 times every day, and the kids 'helped' as much as they could to get ready for the trip. One afternoon when I told Makenzie she had to have reading time or nap time, I came down to her sitting on the couch like this :). I guess you're never too young for Harry Potter!
Hunter loves to be outside. This being said, our backyard isn't really crawling-kid friendly. It has a lot of slopes and rocks and cement. We are working on fixing it, but for now he can't be outside unless I go with him or he learns to walk. We have this gate set up so he can participate with the kids out there, and it keeps him from screaming at the door while the kids play :)
Makenzie is officially a candy thief. The entire week after Easter, she would go to all lengths to get and eat Starbursts. This is a big feat for a 2 year old with not enough fine motor control to get them unwrapped efficiently :). More than once I caught her climbing onto the counter or opening every cupboard in the kitchen looking for treats, and all of her shirts showed evidence of sugar drool...I guess my biggest surprise is that it took 6 years of parenting to get a kid who would sneak treats!
Just a glimpse into my futile effort to make powdered donuts into a healthy after school snack :). Carter is so particular with everything he does; he wouldn't dare start eating his donut until the 'log' was sufficiently covered with 'ants' :).
Just some cute kids trying to get out of the rain...
Olivia is really into Starfall on the computer right now. I'ts all about letters and reading, so I haven't fully explored the website. Much to my surprise, this afternoon I walked into the room to hear Olivia and Carter reciting Shakespeare! Apparently there is more than just reading practice on this sight, and they have learned quite a few lines of famous poetry together.
Do you have a kid who eats avocados this way? She told me that she wanted to eat like a monkey :)
During the worst possible time (with projects galore and Easter cleanup and big family trip prep) I found a fun and free conference on Success to watch. It was all one hour webinars from different people that have written books about time management, emotional intelligence, fitness, eating healthy, etc. There were classes about every topic, mostly geared towards working professionals. Even though a lot of the principles have to be adjusted for stay at home parents, I love learning about efficiency and strategies for success on a daily - and larger scale - basis. Each day there were 5 classes that had to be watched within a certain number of hours, so I may have ignored my parenting and housekeeping duties a few times so I could watch a class and take notes about not ignoring your duties and procrastinating the inevitable :). Regardless, I hope the conference happens again next year, and I will be on the lookout for other similar opportunities. It made me feel like a real person a little bit who can learn and progress outside of my bubble of toddler speak, diapers, and fruit snacks.
On Saturday the 22nd, I began really gathering and packing for Disneyland. This means a 3-4 page spreadsheet, multiple colored pens, the upstairs loft being off-limits, and chocolate. After a few days of sneaking things off to the packing pile, things started to get organized and I was able to get us ready to go. I couldn't have done it without Alex enjoying the weekend with the kids pretty much without me, they aren't quite helpful enough to be involved in the process of packing for the family yet.
We took a packing break that afternoon for a hike and picnic at Kamiak Butte. It's about 20 minutes from our house, and is the perfect length and difficulty of hike for our little family. This particular adventure ended in poop running down a leg uncontrolably, emergency clothes, and countless wipes cleaning up the car and kid...but we will definitely attempt the trip again this summer :).
At the bottom of the hike is a little park and picnic area, so we made use of that before we headed back home. The kids were thrilled to find a ladybug, which Carter helped a little too aggressively... until it met the end that all bugs meet at our house.
This picture should have clued me in that Hunter needed a hair cut, but I didn't get around to his first cut until after his birthday over a month later. The flyaway hair all the time was just too cute!
Carter continued his basketball class through April, and loved every minute of it. He is super serious about his shot, and will be ready to learn more dribbling and passing skills at the next level. During this scrimmage he took about 150 shots and made about half. He also stole the ball a bunch and wasn't afraid to just grab it from someone less aggressive :). It was fun to watch the athlete in him come out, and we will work a little bit on sharing the ball and sportsmanship next year.
Ugh. Here we sit two months later and I am still waffling on the paint color choice. We need something that can but up against a white wall without looking weird (so it can't be super light) but I really want gray. We went with the darkest color on this wall, but even in this picture I can see how blue it is. Back to the drawing board! And I will never again say that painting is the easiest home project.
Olivia had a half day on the last Wednesday in April. This was three days before we left town and I was in the height of packing and stressing about the trip. This trip included 2 days in the car, 2 flights, 3 different hotels, and lots of opportunities for lugging stuff around. I tried to make lists for what should be included in each bag for each event, so we weren't bringing extra stuff but we also had what we wanted. I also tried to make it so we didn't bring all the bags into the hotel the first night before we flew to Southern California, etc. This meant a lot of lists, 2 spreadsheets, and more brain power than I am capable of most days. I was really glad when Olivia pulled out a craft project that she had been hanging on to since Christmas and wanted to complete when no younger siblings were there to mess it up.
One of my favorite things about trip prep is cleaning out my purse. I do this before every major trip, and never in between, so sometimes it is an adventure getting to the bottom. This time, my haul from the depths of the diaper bag was so impressive that I made a list before cleaning it up. I pulled out 13 granola bars, 2 baby food squeezes, 5 fruit snacks, 3 hot wheels cars, 5 plastic figurines, 2 sippy cups, 6 diapers, and countless wipes, napkins, tissues. There was also the usual assortment of pens and sunglasses and wallet and other normal purse items. I have to admit that I was proud of how prepared I would have been in a car-broken down emergency, or anything that life brought me while I had this bag :)
As Makenzie gets bigger she is just becoming a hilarious kid. One afternoon she made this 'dog slide', during which she commentated every step 'I love dogs, ooohhhh, so toot!' in her little voice. After the slide was complete, she called me over to take a picture and demonstrate how the dogs can go down. After that it took me a second to realize that she was going to go down too :). She tried her hardest to get the slide experience, but finally decided that 'me is just toooo big for this tooot slide'.
BTW toot is cute :)
2 days before we left was a beautiful day without any major plans, so the kids and I headed to the library for Storytime, then went for a walk along the river before meeting Alex for lunch. Kenz was - as usual - cracking us up when we told her to wash up after lunch...I handed her a wipe and expected just about anything except her to wipe down her armpits and hand it back :). That particular picture opportunity led to pictures of everyone at lunch, and Carter insisting that we couldn't see him because he was behind the straw.
The age of staring adoringly at oneself in the mirror has officially begun :)
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