Easter 2019: A Family Affair to Remember

Saturday afternoon we let the kids dye eggs.  I boiled 60 and everyone got nearly ten.  My nephew came over and we shared two with him, but that's all he really cared to do anyway.  It was hot out in that sun.  We need to find a cover for this gazebo that sits in the middle of our (rental's) yard.

Then Brian made an apple strudel, which is pretty crazy since it's the first things he's ever baked...EVER.  He didn't bake it though because we got all cleaned up and went to the Easter Vigil as a family for the first time since Brian and I came into the church.  A late service like that is never fun with little ones, and we always make Holy Thursday Mass a priority since it is my favorite.

Hannah was still getting dressed.  She missed out on the family picture.

Brian was so worried that we wouldn't get seats at the Vigil Mass after our Midnight Mass experience, and so we arrived an hour early.  I did not think this entirely necessary, but I didn't want to be the one responsible for making us stand for over two hours.   So we took some pictures in the van and hung out for a while before going in.  The parking lot was completely empty.

Easter morning, the kids got to have their Easter baskets before heading over to my brother's house for Easter lunch, egg hunts and other festivities!

This is how listening to my husband's yearly Laying Down of the Laws of the Easter Egg Hunt looks.

The gold sparkly one has money in it!

The little ones met at the tot table to check out their egg stash while the older kids tried to find the most tricky eggs hid by the dads.

Of course, there were confetti eggs to smash!

And don't forget a walloping game of water balloon baseball to end the fun at Uncle Kent's before moving to my sister's house to swim.

Attempting to Catch Up

This season in my life seems to make it very difficult to keep up with my blog posting.  I'm once again going to attempt to catch up and actually post regularly so this doesn't happen again.  In order to try this though I am going to do a fast catch up that is less than thorough.

This post is just a few disjointed pictures from things that have been going on.  Several friends have been turning 40 lately so we've been to three other 40 celebrations.  I've been particularly bad about taking pictures (but good at living in the moment!) so this is the only party I really got any decent pictures from.

This fountain is outside our parish and it is a big draw after sitting still in Mass for the boys to run around it and try to look into it.

We went to the zoo again, and we wore Bobby out, mainly, because he is fazing out the nap.  Eventually it catches up with him, especially if he doesn't even get a "rest" in his room to look at books.  I give him a big stack of books and he goes to town looking through them until the timer rings.

My Nephew's 3rd Birthday Party

My nephew had his third birthday, and it was a joy to be here to celebrate it with him!

Bobby trying the pinata

Judah trying the pinata

Drew trying the pinata

Bobby is almost four years old (sniff sniff) and these boys are all just barely three, and they are the same height.

Drew with his other cousin

Hannah and Genevieve invited friends to this party so they'd have someone to hang out with since no one else was over seven.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of my sweet niece!  She is just too sweet!  She got very sleepy during the party and so I took her to the back room and tried to get her to sleep.  My sister hadn't brought any of her sleep stuff, but I was pleased that I still have the magic touch and was able to get her down in less than fifteen minutes.   

I made my nephew these sports figure wooden peg people.  He is big into sports and is quite the natural for his age.  I made a basketball player version of himself and the Padres player is my sister-in-law's cousin.

Bobby's Run In with the Stone Step

Most of these are gratuitous pictures of our little cherub, but the point of this post is to tell about the very bad fall that he had.  We had just finished swimming at my sisters pool for the first time since it was installed.  I had wrapped him up in his Flash superhero towel and was walking with him to the steps.  I was holding his towel up so he could walk without tripping on it, and we came to the steps up to the house.   I realized that he wouldn't be able to take these big steps with the towel around him and was about to pick him up when he tried the first step and missed completely, his head went down and his hands were all wrapped up in the towel.  I had hold of the towel, but was helpless to stop it.  He hit his lip/face right on the sharp edge of the stone step.  It looked so bad.  I was afraid he had hit his nose.  Brian thought he knocked out teeth.  But, thanks be to God!, it wasn't as bad as that.  He cut his lip up and his gums were all sliced up and bruised.  His lip was huge, and I worried he wouldn't be able to eat solid foods.

Thankfully, less than an hour later after a lot of ice, he was able to eat his dinner.  He had a dental appointment already scheduled for the next day so we skipped teeth brushing that night and let the dentist have a look.  He aid it looked okay and as long as the teeth didn't turn gray then he'd be fine.  I prayed so hard for that not to happen.  Within a week, you could barely tell by looking at him that anything had happened.

I love this guy SO. MUCH.

You can still see the droop of his upper lip in this picture three days later, but it was already on the mend.  Little ones heal so fast!  I was also expecting bruising on his face, but it was just in his mouth.

Genna's Latin Cake

The girls' school as an annual carnival called Fiestaval.  There was a cake decorating contest to get people to make cakes for the cake walk.  Genevieve had a cool idea to include birds and Latin into one great idea.

It means "One among Many."  This is the first cake for her to do from start to finish by herself.  I only advised and did a little trouble-shooting.  She learned some invaluable lessons, like when she turned the mixer onto high right away when she had a bowl full of seriously liquid cake ingredients.  Needless to say, it went everywhere!

She didn't win, but I thought it was the best.  Not biased at all!

The carnival was not my favorite thing, but it's because Brian was out of town (we actually left right after this to go meet him in Aggieland) and I had no one to talk to.  I just had to follow the little two boys around while they played games and jumped on bouncy things.  The big kids all deserted me the whole time for their friends.

Judah jumping across on these giant blown up bags.

Mariachi Band

The cake table

Drew trying out the dunk tank