Going on an Egg Hunt

The kiddos experienced their first real Easter egg hunt this weekend. Well, it wasn't as much a hunt as an Easter egg gather, but everyone got their share of candy-filled plastic eggs and that's what an egg hunt is about, right? We headed down to Charlotte to visit with Bogey, Marmee, Aunt Meghann and Uncle John while we got prepared to hunt.

We started off the event with some much needed "healthy" snacks.

We were then introduced to the Easter Bunny himself. My kids do not like Santa - maybe it's the beard - but they love (and I mean LOVE) costumed animals. Easter Bunnies, Mickey Mouse, you name it, they go running straight at it. Kind of makes me wonder what our first trip to Disney World will be like. Adah was the official Easter Bunny stalker this particular day. Here she is once she had the poor costumed man/woman/disgruntled teenager trying to earn a buck in her sights.

She then proceeded to follow him around the entire room for the duration of his visit. Poor Meghann had to follow her all around the room making sure she didn't accidentally trip him or hog him too much from the other kids waiting to see him.

After our love affair with the bunny started to fade, it was time to hunt for eggs! If any of you know my husband and me, you know we are pretty competitive people. Of course I wanted my kids to just have a good time and get a couple eggs, but deep down I wanted them to come home with a big haul. You know those annoying kids that end up with so many eggs that they end up stuffing them in their pockets because their basket is overflowing?? Well, I must admit that secretly I wanted my kids to be THAT kid. Sad, isn't it? Well, when it came down to it, expecting 2 year olds to hunt for anything is just wishing for a miracle. They really don't get that concept yet. The eggs were simply dumped out and they gathered them up. Anti-climactic, I know, but at least they got the gathering idea down.

I have to admit that they did do a great job with their egg collecting. The competitive bones in my body felt the satisfaction of victory and we admired everyone's full baskets - until they all decided that dumping out all the eggs onto the ground was WAY more fun that collecting them. Oh well, maybe they'll start pushing kids out of the way and fighting for eggs next year.

After the hunt, it was time to say goodbye. The stalker got her fix one more time ...

And we headed for home. But not before making sure we decimated some of the property before we left. Unfortunately, we have a new found affinity for picking flowers off of arrangements. Oh well, that's what they get for placing them at a child's level, right?

We are headed off to sunny FL for spring break!! Hope everyone has a great Easter and please pray for us as we drive for 7+ hours in the car with 4 kiddies!

Mohawks, Facial Hair, and Visits From Nonni

Sorry about the time lapse in posts, but we have been busy around here lately. Matt went out of town for work and Nonni (my mom - there we go again with the "non-grandma" grandma names) came for a visit! We had a blast hanging out with her for a few days. We're excited about heading down to FL next week for spring break, yea! Everyone please pray for sunny, warm weather. As for the past week, here's a little of what we've been up to.

The boys got new hair styles.

We continued our new found love of juice boxes.

Daddy taught us the ins and outs of sideburns and beards.

We also participated in a new and innovative fitness class combining yoga and coloring.

We managed to squeeze every last drop of fun out of our visit with Nonni (and every last drop of Nonni's energy too!).

And we started getting ready for Easter with some help from our preschool teacher and the bunny ears she gave us (Sam was working on an ear infection this day, which is why he doesn't exactly look as overjoyed as the girls to be sporting a bunny ear headband).

We're going to our first Easter egg hunt this weekend, so we'll let everyone know how it turns out. Should be lots of fun!

Like A Prayer

So Luke has adopted a new habit of dancing. He doesn't even require music to bust a move, but it does make it more enjoyable to watch. Take a look at these moves (note: Yes, he is sporting a Mohawk and the story about how it got that way is too long to get into now. I think its adds some "baby punk" edge to complement the children's music he's dancing to anyway).

Not to be outdone, Peyton and Adah wanted to exhibit their totally amazing memorization skills with this next video. Although their powers of recollection are surely off the charts, their sub par enunciation skills make it a tad bit hard to hear what they're saying. Here's a copy of the bedtime prayer they are saying:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Guide me safely through the night,
until I see the morning light.

Then the real fun begins when they have to remember everyone to "bless." Take a look ...

So you know, most of the people being blessed are family members (though they all have trendy grandparent names so it's hard to tell ... whatever happened to grandma and grandpa?). The only one who isn't is Wonkie, Peyton's security blanket, who was someone Adah felt worthy of blessing. Isn't she a nice sister blessing Peyton's Wonkie?

In addition, yes, they are wearing snow suits in the pictures. I just ordered them on clearance for our big ski trip next year (yay!) and I wanted to see if they would fit them in a year. I think they have plenty of room. The problem was, they didn't want to take them off once they were on. We ended up wearing them for snack right up until dinner. Maybe they were cold ... or maybe it's just a neat sensation to a 2 year old to suddenly feel like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man for a few hours. It kind of made me want to rent some of those sumo suits just to try it out for myself. But then I thought about what kind of bodily fluids might seep into all those rented sumo suits as people sweat in the heat of the battle and I decided against it ... sorry for the mental picture. Hope you enjoy the videos!

Memories

I always like to go back and look at old pictures of the kiddos just for fun. It's crazy to see how much they change in just a year and it brings back lots of memories of what my life was like at that time. Here are some pictures taken just about a year ago.

Getting Sam to sit still for a picture at this point in his life was, well, pointless. I guess not TOO much changes in a year.

Our fashionista ...

The Bald Wonder ...

Can you tell I was just itching to be able to put something in one of the girls' hair? Peyton's hair looked like a palm frond for a few months, but I was bound and determined to put something in that hair!

Whenever I look back, it makes me laugh and cry at the same time. The memories are so wonderful, but I can't believe how big they get so fast. Just the other day Peyton told me she was "too big" to do something ... and she was right! How can they already be too big to do anything!?! Having the triplets has made me savor Luke's "baby-ness" a lot more. I am less in a hurry for him to walk, talk, eat regular food, etc. because I just want him to stay my cuddly little baby boy. At least he is still little enough that he doesn't have any pictures from a year ago for me to post (well, you could see a picture of me 7 months pregnant, but no one really wants to see that do they?). Looking back reminds me to slow down and take my time. I need to enjoy them while they are little and spilling things, making messes and singing songs over and over and over again (seriously, will they ever get tired of Baa Baa Black Sheep?). So today I'm going to remember to hug them all one extra time and take some more pictures so I can look back again a year from now and think the same things.

Mr. LEGO

Well, I officially have a LEGO maniac. I wondered if it would happen and it finally has. Sam is officially obsessed with these things. The only downside is that I continually find myself stepping on them and those things do not feel very pleasant on bare feet. But our future engineer loves them so we'll have to make do. Here he is with his latest tower. He even amazes himself with how tall he can build them!

The proud architect.

I"m still not sure what Luke's future holds. If anyone knows of a job that stresses opening cabinets and geting into things that you shouldn't, then he is your man! Too bad being cute isn't a profession.

Day Trip

It's officially the start of March and all I can say is that this North Carolina weather is not showing me any impending signs of the upcoming spring. It is snowing outside as I type. So we are stuck inside with the kids and our play time has started to include things like this ...

Yes, that is my husband playing his Wii with the two boys mesmerized by his every move. It's not even a Wii Fit, so I can't even try to begin to pawn it off as exercise. We decided this past weekend that we needed an outing to get the kids out of the house. So we headed down the interstate to our closest "big(ger) city", Charlotte. My in-laws live there and we planned to spend the day with them and take the kids to a children's museum in the city.

Our trip was just what the doctor ordered. We had a great lunch and then left Luke to nap with his gandparents while we went with the kids to Discovery Place. They had a blast with all the hands-on exhibits.

This giant Lite-Brite was awesome.

We also got to take in a 3-D movie. They were enthralled and Peyton kept reaching out to touch everything she was seeing through her glasses.

As the day wound down, we stumbled upon this exhibit. It was absolutely disgusting. The theme of the area had to do with bugs and some sick-o decided that a good thing to show kids is how maggots help decompose a human body. Great science, I know, but in a children's museum, really? Save that for the pre-pubescent boys in middle school who would have thought it was cool. Well, Peyton LOVED this exhibit. Here's how much she loved it ...

She was literally on top of Mr. Dead Body in his body bag staring intently at the maggots that were supposedly decomposing him. She threw a fit when we made her get off. I don't know what this says about her future interests, but I'm going to start steering her away from corpses and maggots in the future.

As the day wound down and everyone started to get tired, we called it a day. We made our way back up the interstate to good ole W-S. What a fun day!

We'll definitely have to go back soon. And if everyone sleeps how they did the night we got back, we should consider doing this every weekend!