Birthday/Zoo/Easter Pictures

Johnny's first Easter Egg Hunt.

Let's get comfortable here.

Cousin Ayden, Uncle Chris and Holiday coming off the carousel.

Face painting! She might have mommy's astigmatism.

Grandma Linda, Daddy and Holiday.

It's a Tiger!

Eating lunch and birthday cupcakes as well as taking refuge from the rain.

Cupcakes were a hit. Thank you Pinterest.

Johnny really liked that dinosaur water bottle they sell at the zoo.

Johnny and Uncle Chris.

Easter Day...love the pretty dress with the boots.  

It was a sunny, dewy start to the day.

Johnny was pretty good at it too. 

Let's see we have Johnny looking at the camera and Holiday looking away...

...and sure enough we have Johnny looking away and Holiday looking at the camera.

Great news everyone!  Holiday will be going to Adams...our first choice.  So now we won't have to scramble and take time off work to pick her up in time.  Yeah!  She will probably be in Kindergarten with some of her friends too, and keep her teachers and caregivers for before and after school care.  So the daily routine will only have the change of having Kindergarten instruction in the Kindergarten classroom instead of pre-school at the pre-school classroom. Before and After school care will be Kids Co again and they are right on site.  That will make that transition easier for her.

Happy Birthday Holiday

Holiday is the big 5 and she knows it.  "Hi, I'm Holiday. I'm 5."  (holds hand up so one can indeed count 5 fingers).  We had a little cake for her on her birthday and she opened presents.  On Saturday we went to the Bunny Bounce at the zoo, which was sopping wet.  We at least got the egg hunts in.  Kudos to everyone who came and toughed it out.  After the rain kicked in, we all mostly hung out in the covered food court, the Zoomazium (which is covered) and the Tropical Rainforest exhibit, again covered.  That part used to be the nocturnal house so that was new for us.  We'll have to go back on a nice day so the kids can really check out the animals.  We colored Easter eggs Saturday night and had our own egg hunt in our backyard on Easter Day.  Johnny was almost as good at it as Holiday.  I didn't get to any yard work this weekend but I did peek at my seedlings in the greenhouse to make sure they were watered enough.  A lot of stuff NEEDS to get transplanted asap.  The pumpkins, zucchini, broccoli and romaine are pretty much busting out.  The rest will probably be close behind.  I have weeding to do and more seeds to plant, but the yard looks pretty good.  We also went to Drew's band performance yesterday evening.  He plays mostly bass but does other stuff as well.  I loved the Easter version of Tribute.  I'm also highly entertained by the lead singer's passion for changing costumes during the set.  I think the bunny outfit was Holiday's favorite.  The kids both liked the place and balloons and dancing.  We had to leave when there was no more space for Johnny to explore except for the kitchen, bothering the sound guy and the front door and beyond (which he could totally open).  I'm thinking that Bumbershoot will probably be more fun this year with the kids interested in music and dancing.  I'll post pictures once they are downloaded from the cameras.

Nice Weekend

What a great weather weekend.  It's been a while since we've had one of those.  We pretty much stuck to home on Saturday since Johnny wasn't feeling too good.  He woke up with a fever of 99.5 and a runny nose.  The fever didn't get much worse and the fever reducer kept bringing it back down.  Sunday he was fine.  Holiday I were able to do some serious weeding on Saturday while Johnny and Daddy were napping.  There's another big patch in the front to do and I would have loved to kick that out yesterday but the soreness had already kicked in, although the total loss of grip strength probably had more to do with it.  Today is 'second-day soreness'.  Maybe I can get to it on some weeknight this week.  It certainly looks better when it's all weeded out.  Yesterday we did our usual Sunday errands and David mowed the lawn again (crazy happy grass).  David and Holiday washed the car with the new spiffy pressure washer.  Holiday came in when she decided it was 'too wet.'  Our neighbor rototilled our way back part of our back yard for us.  The part that used to be the fenced in, wild blackberry infested, yard waste heap that David has since disposed of.  Right behind that is green belt so some lame-o neighbors have used that to dump car batteries and other stuff.  So I decided to plant pumpkins there since we won't be eating those and it gives it plenty of room to sprawl.  A lot of seedlings are really taking off, I'll probably be able to transplant most of it late this month or early May.  Except for the peppers, maybe it was too early so I'll get it another shot.  I know our rhubarb plant really took off last week so it probably won't be long to harvest that.  David bought Johnny a coloring book since he's been all about coloring lately and he just loves it.  I would recommend coloring books for Johnny if anyone is looking for birthday present ideas.  He goes through them quickly and destructively and he LOVES it.  Also he's been insisting at sitting at the table like big people.  That's been a little rough since he's not quite stable yet.  Even Holly falls out of her seat once in a while.  Makes us nervous but you don't want to say 'no' all the time, especially when they are learning a new skill.  Both the kids like painting projects lately.  Johnny got so covered that he went straight to the bath tub afterwards.

SLIDE!!!

That slide was wicked fast, but they both loved it.

It was simply too much fun to cheap out on pictures.

Visiting Grandma Linda. 

That was such a small box.

I couldn't believe they both squeezed into that.  And Johnny's cheeks are too squeezably cute so I guess this end result was inevitable.

He wasn't happy about that though.

The estate sale of Grandma Linda's house went well so that's good news.  There were a couple inquiries to the sale of the house itself which is promising.  It sounds like she'll move to a more permanent place sometime next week.  Daddy had a busy weekend with fixing a tire flat, building a platform step for Grandma and mowing the first mow of the year.  We had some happy grass so it took him about 4 passes to get it to a normal length.  Whew!  Now that the lawn looks so great the weeds really pop out in the flower beds.  The back yard looks pretty good, now I need to get to the front. Some of my greenhouse seeds are starting to sprout, so that's exciting.  Holiday is in her 'wants to help with everything' phase.  Which is good, it keeps me on my toes to keep coming up with ways she can help with chores and stuff.  She's a lot more excited about the things she learns at school.  Last week was bees so she's bee crazy right now.  The week before was volcanoes.  I think she's intellectually developed more to be able to retain more of what she's learns than she used to.  It's a noticeable change.  Johnny is learning lots too.  The other day he was eating breakfast watching Sesame Street and the letter of day was C, but he yelled it out before they had a chance to say it.  So he's visually starting to recognize letters.  He does seem to know what things belong to certain people. Like the Mickey Mouse is Holiday's so when he comes across it he picks it up and runs it to her (whether she wants it right then or not).