Easter Easter!

Well, this weekend I'll be working. Sad day for me, BUT I was not about to be left out of the egg dying experience. So the boys and I dyed our eggs a few days ago!


First we prepared our area. Lots and lots of newspapers!

And then Mommy prepared the kiddies. Aprons up to their necks just in case.

The dyes came out, all lined up for perfect use, inducing a little boy frenzie!

E could barely contain himself! This was his first dying experience that he could be more involved in. If I left him alone for a few seconds, he'd grab his eggs and toss them in the dye. I think if I allowed it, all of the eggs would have been stuck in ALL of the colors, resulting in some nasty looking eggs.

Egg dying at it's best!

Praise the eggs!

After we finished our dying massacre- which A thought meant that we were going to kill the eggs. dye- die. I can see where is confusion comes from. :) We ate some peeps!

Awe cute little peeps. We love you so much, you're so precious and sweet.

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DIE PeEpS!! Suffer my toddler wrath!

And have a Happy Easter everyone!

Eggcellent Weather!

Ayden scored big time. We had to cheat to help Ethan. Both boys are happy campers though. Yes I know this constitutes as writing! And now this pictures only post is all a lie! But I had to say a little! I can't help myself. First off Conference was wonderful and beautiful and touching and I'm glad I get to listen to it whenever I want. I've been "packing" and listening to conference and other shows online. We also had the blessed opportunity to have Easter Lunch/Dinner with the Wenn family. They're on McKay's side of the gene pool. It was so nice to go over to their home. We're kind of the fish out of water down here when it comes to having immediate family close. We love that they invite us, especially since I have not yet developed the skills of a good cook and Karen has! Its like Christmas to have yummy food to eat and great company to share the food with! 

The weather has been improving around here. I think. Utah is PMSing right now and we never know what's going to hit us. Yesterday she happened to be in a good mood and the boys and I were able to play outside!

We aren't cool enough to have our own Scooter and Sandbox toys just yet. For an hour of their life I promoted committing a crime and let them play with the other kids' toys from our townhouse village. Ayden really liked the scooter. A lot. I was surprised he knew what to do with it. Maybe when he's 3 we'll get him one. Although we do say that with everything he shows interest in. *hmmmmmm*

St. Patricks Day meets Easter

Easter has come and gone. It was a beautiful weekend. We'll just forget about the three inches of snow that fell outside on Easter Sunday and it will be forever remembered as a precious weekend! After looking through my photos that I took this weekend I realized that I surpassed a few that I wanted to share!

This last Thursday we had some of McKay's cousins over. They're 4 and 2 years old and we decided to dye eggs and make some other fun little crafts!

I pulled out all the dyes and covered the table with some newspaper and we went nuts! They had all sorts of colors. Yellow, green, red, puke brown. . . that's what you get when you mix green, orange and red together. We had purple, blue and pink. It was fun to watch these boys get so excited. Ayden and Cole would run back and forth collecting new eggs unnnnnnntil. . . one of the eggs slipped out of their hands and crashed to the ground. This is when I discovered that the eggs were slightly undercooked. I can NEVER get eggs just right- they're either too well done or underdone.


Frustrated I took all the eggs we'd just finished and put them in a bowl of water and microwaved them, hoping, hoping, hoping that the dye would somehow stay! 25 minutes later I took them out of the microwave, tested one. They were finally done. Overdone now. AND all of the dye was gone. AND I'd gotten rid of all of the colors besides the green.

So we had a very GREEN Easter this year. The 4 in there that are different colors were from an earlier activity with some of my friends. Thank gosh we had those to add a LITTLE bit of variety. I learned that it is really hard to make each egg look different with only the color green. I left some in really long, really short, only covered half the egg, etc. Good thing my kids will never remember this year and won't be upset with me for destroying their dyed eggs.

Along with dying Easter Eggs, we made some bunny ears! Ethan wasn't interested in Bunny ears, so he ran

around with his Mickey Ears. :)

The boys got to color on their headbands first and once they were finished we put their ears on and set them loose! Ayden took these to the grocery store with him on Friday and had a bunch of old and young people staring at him and smiling. I'm just glad no one tried to touch him. For some reason people feel that if you're little and cute that there's a green light to touch, pinch, poke! He did score on candy though. A man in the produce section gave him some candy. Then later on in the checkout line he was given some more candy. Both the boys seriously scored big this year.

Here was the last little craft we had going. Awwwww isn't it pretty?

Too bad they aren't ours! We had a bit of an issue with our design. What you're supposed to do it blow up a balloon. Get some sugar water or glue and run string through it. Once it's all covered you wrap the string around the balloon. Let it dry and then pop the balloon. It will then leave this lovely shell of yarn or string in the shape of your balloon! I remember doing this as a child and was so excited to try it. Our balloon had finally dried and I proceeded to pop it. That's when it all went to he**!

AAAAAUUUUUGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

What IS that thing!?!?!

I'll tell you what it is. Its a mass of broken dreams and shattered childhood memories!

Easter Weekend Part 2

I'll just jump right into this. We were cold. We were somewhat happy and we were in and out pretty fast. Enjoy the remaining photos!

We had to hit up the cow ride of course. Ethan wasn't invited. I had this image in my head of both the boys sitting down nicely going around the course and then Ethan all of the sudden deciding that he was done. He would just stand up and try to crawl out, inevitably falling out and most likely getting run over by the rest of the train. AND that is why he stayed with me and played. :)

We cuddled in my coat.

Decided we were too good for my coat and ran.

 

Found a fun place to stick our head and had an overall good time!

 

Ayden returned....

and we made our way to another station.

We found a line for the bouncy house and waited.

"Boys! Smile!. . . Ethan come on. Its not that bad. Smile!. . . No?? Fine then."

Ayden made it into the bouncy house and played for about 3 minutes. There were a lot of big kids in there knocking him around so he didn't have as much fun as he usually does.

 After that all of us were done. We rushed our blue fingers, runny noses and crazy hair back to the car so we could take some more  pictures!

Easter Egg hunt, cold air, crazy parents part 1

I love doing things with my children! It is so much fun to run around and play with them. When you don't have children you don't really have much of an excuse to play on the jungle gym.  It tends to be a little more awkward when you get excited about getting your face painted when you're at the zoo when you have no kids as well. I guess what I'm really trying to say is, my kids are my excuse to be a kid again!!! Thank you boys.

This morning Ayden and I pulled our little tookus's out of bed and went to the Pioneer Park near our house. The Easter Egg hunt began at 10am and we were both SO excited to go! Ethan had to stay home and man the fort. McKay was too sick to go and I didn't feel comfortable bringing my 2 1/2 year old and 1 year old to a park full of children and setting them loose on the grass to run around when I was the only parent there. For some reason that just didn't sound safe to me.

The weather was not going to cooperate and we ended up sitting in the car until the egg hunt was ready. So we passed the time by goofing off.

Ayden's much better at the fishy face than I am.

At 9:50 we crawled out of the car and made our way to the 2 & under section where we stood freezing. The announcer came on right before the event and explained the 'rules'. "Parents make sure your children are in the right section for their age group, please remember that this is for the kids. No rushing or stampeding. And don't forget there are some golden eggs in each section. IF you get a golden egg you'll win a special prize. Don't forget parents, this is for the kids. Ready....set.... go!" As soon as those words came out of his mouth I saw a mother book it for the Golden Egg that Ayden and I had spotted. She snatched it up and then went back for her kid. . .

 *If you look really close you can see the gold egg under the left tree. Its the white spec in the dirt.*

wait did I miss something here? Didn't he JUST say this is for the kids?? What makes you think your child deserved the special prize over everyone else's child?! I hate parents like that. It completely ruins the fun and the sense of accomplishment for the kid. At least if the child had gotten it themselves they could have really been excited about that. Not to mention you look like a fool running for an Easter Egg in the 2 & under section when you're clearly over 30. Ayden and I disregarded the golden egg and started picking up the other one's around. He was so excited he barely knew what to do. His little eyes were bugging out of his head and for a second he just sort of ran around for the sake of running. I had to stop him and tell him to grab the eggs! He finally bent down to get one and a 6 or 7 year old was in our area scooping up all the eggs. She greedily snatched Ayden's egg out of his hand, so I stopped her and told her to give it back to him and to go to her age appropriate section and to stop stealing the eggs from the little kids. I have to admit I wasn't exactly nice about it. I was already annoyed at the injustice of the Golden Egg and the crazed Mom and I wasn't ready to tolerate any more cheating. I kind of wish greed was something that wasn't bred into every child. That little girl walked away with 30 or so eggs when most of the other toddlers in the area had 6-8.

All in all, Ayden had a blast and that's what was important.

I'm not sure what he's staring at, but he looks scared doesn't he! hahaha

After we had our fun at Pioneer Park we went home, showed Daddy our 8 eggs and drove off to Thanksgiving Point with Ethan. 

They had a small Easter Egg hunt there and I was able to record the end results of said Egg hunt.

Don't be fooled by the illusion of the sun. It was desperately COLD outside!