Butterflies and flowers

Last Monday, we went to the botanical gardens with some friends and had a great time. It was a gorgeous day, beautiful weather. We had lunch outside and went thru the butterfly exhibit and played in the children's garden.

Reese would walk up to any random stranger and either give them things she had found or take their hand and lead them wherever they would let her. I'm so nervous that she is that kind of child who will walk away with anyone that will take her. She does not have the desire to stick with me or Dave. She is very friendly, but that can be bad. I guess it makes me feel good to know that she will always have peeps.

Dave was able to come with us and watch Reese's fascination with all the butterflies. I could have lived there with all the wonderful flower smells - it was overwhelming to me - I could not breathe in enough! It was a perfect day!

Do I laugh or cry?

I love this video because Reese can't decide whether she wants to cry or perform her tricks-

Nothing but walking!

Reese has learned to walk and she no longer wants to crawl. In fact, in the beginning she still could not get to standing unless she was next to something that she could use to pull herself up, which meant crawling to get to that something and then standing to walk until she would fall and doing it over again. So, the day after she started taking her first steps on her own, she would stop several times along her path, bend over to put her hands on the floor, and really concentrate on how to stand up in the middle of nowhere. It only took her a day of doing this to figure it all out and now she is getting everywhere on two feet! Here is a video of the beginning of a whole new world -

The Hunt Is On!

Making bunny ears.
The one second Reese left her ears on

The kids are watching Sam and Noah hide the eggs and anxiously waiting to go outside.

The "hidden" eggs

Look at my treasures!

Some other moms and I were talking one day about an Easter egg hunt for our little babies. We talked about the hunt at the zoo, but it runs on a reservation basis and it was full, and we talked about the neighborhood hunt in the park but heard that it was total chaos and not good for our new little walkers, so we decided to have one of our own. About seven babies and their parents and some grandparents came to our house and we had a wonderful party. Everyone brought food and treats, we made bunny ears using the childrens' footprints and we had and easter egg hunt in the yard. Noah and Sam (the big brother of one of the babies) got to "hide" the eggs and they did a perfect job of it. It made me so happy to watch all the tiny little legs toddling and crawling around the yard getting eggs. And when they had found enough, they each sat in the grass with their little pile of eggs and goodies and soaked up some sun. It was much better than being part of big crowd - I'm so glad that we thought of it!

Earthy Eggs

We always buy the free range organic eggs from the store and when it came time to decorate easter eggs, I did not think and just got what we always get. Well, these eggs are brown, so when we sat down to dye the eggs, really the only colors that worked at all were green, blue and purple. All the others came out still looking like the brown egg. We also had a fun egg spinning contraption that made a marbled effect on the egg that worked pretty well on the brown eggs, but when all was said and done, they all looked like a very toned down version of Easter eggs. Of course we told Noah that it was a great experiment (to make it seem more exciting that all his eggs looked the same in the end). What we do as parents to convince our kids that we don't make mistakes - I know he was on to us - he's smarter than me, I can't fool him.

Skipping to Easter

Appetizer bunnies :)

Reese's new tunnel from easter bunny - she loves to go inside and lie down

Reese in her pretty new Tutu from Grammy and Pop

Noah's easter backpack (instead of basket)

It's fun to buy girlie easter dresses!

Relaxing after a fun day.

I'm going to do a bit of backward blogging. I have not been able to catch up on all the time I have not been making blog entries and new events keep happening, so I have decided to start with the present activities and get to the past ones as I find time - which may be never.

Which means that currently we have just celebrated Easter. We have had a lot of trouble with church lately. There are two time slots, the early one which offers no junior church for Noah and the late service which falls right during Reese's naptime. To try and accomodate both my children, for the last two weeks, we have all left home for the early service, where Reese and I "attend" church and Noah plays his DS in the car. I put "attend" in quotations because I hear very little of what goes on between trying to keep the snacks coming fast enough for Reese and trying to keep her from wandering down the aisles. After the first service is done, Reese and I come home for her nap and Noah stays for junior church during the second service and someone brings him home, ie. Grammy and Pop, neighbor friends or Dave.

Anyway, this is what happened for Easter Sunday, so my family was not together for church. However, we all came together for an easter hunt and a wonderful meal on our patio that afternoon.

Over the hills and thru the woods...

Our annual tradition of going to the cabin the week after Christmas was a hit once again. I so much look forward to being "trapped" with the whole family for a week, playing games, watching movies, sledding, doing our puzzles, doing our projects, eating and being together. We are all so blessed to be able to do this every year. I will never be able to convey enough gratitude to Grammy and Pop for having the idea and making it happen. It's the best week of the entire year - every year!

This year, some friends from the neighborhood were in Pinetop the same time we were, so we got to go sledding with them and Noah got to spend the night with his friends. It made the trip even more special this time.

Reese loved eating the snow and the sledding. We got her a little sled and she felt like such a big girl sitting in it all by herself and zooming down the hill. It was also great for pulling her around in the snow.

The big day

We had a very busy Christmas season as usual and finally the big day came. Grammy and Pop spent the night Christmas Eve and it was so awesome to have them there when we all woke up to open presents. Reese was not quite sure what to do with her presents and I'm sure she was very overwhelmed. In fact, we were still opening Christmas presents up until her birthday! It worked out great because it meant we got something new to play with every few days. Noah finally got a nice piano to play and it's wonderful. I love hearing music in the house (although I can't really say that about the recorder practice).

We ended the day at church for dinner. It was another perfect Christmas day.