Happy Easter!

 So different from last year! Sophie is starting to talk a lot, even if we don't understand everything. She and Austin had a great time this week, doing practice Easter egg hunts with glow in the dark eggs. We dyed eggs on Tuesday and made egg salad Saturday. Some very lucky chickens got the leftovers and shells. On the night before Easter, it is a tradition for Austin to set out the baskets. Sophie's basket was new this year and I didn't realize it when I bought it, but it's much larger than the basket that has been Austin's. I let him choose which basket he wanted and he gave the big one to his sister! As usual, the bunny moved Austin's basket to a more secret spot and left lots of goodies, surrounded by eggs. Sophie's basket was moved to her car seat, so she would know it was hers. Both kids had just a great week and a fabulous morning, I think :)

great idea from http://www.playathomemomllc.com/2012/03/illuminated-easter-egg-hunt/

 Sophie's first Easter egg!

Here's some video I shot of Sophie opening her basket and holding court over breakfast :)





 And here are Sophie and baby Austin with their first Easter eggs. They make the same face when they taste them :)

First Birthday Party!

You know what's great about 1 year olds? They have no idea when their birthday is, so when everyone gets sick, it's not a big deal to shift that party to the next weekend.

You know what else is great about them? They have no idea what presents are, so when their 3 year old brother is completely losing his marbles about festively wrapped packages he's not supposed to touch, you can relent halfway through the party and let him unwrap everything while she sleeps in a cake coma.

That about covers it. Oh yeah, they're pretty cute too.

even when they have chocolate all over 'em

and especially if I'm not holding them. (Thanks, Mere!!)

90% asleep

The unwrapping

100% asleep

The table of snacks and cake. We had a polka dot theme. A whole platter of candy dots, a jar of M&Ms...

Plus Kix and Trix and Rainbow Chex Mix, which was astonishingly easy to make and came out beautiful and delicious! The polka dots on the cake are more M&Ms...

#Pinterestwin!

Note that everything has now been crammed together in the middle of the table. It was very very hard not to touch the cake. Very hard.

Why is everyone looking at me?

I wonder what the neighbors are doing?

Polka dot cascarones

I was super proud of my balloon chandelier, so I took way too many picture of it. I got a huge crochet hoop at Goodwill a while back, (like, 18 inches in diameter maybe?) and that thing has been great fun. It was the crow's nest for Austin's pirate party, with some black cloth and skeletons. For this, I tied ribbons all around the inner hoop and then tied balloons on the ribbons and then slid them around until it looked dense enough. Then I put the outer hoop on and suspended it from our chandelier over the table. Very easy! And when Daddy took it down, he put the balloons to good use in the play pen.

The fungeon

A Festival of Colors...

...Mostly on our pants. We celebrated Holi this week. Holi is a Hindu festival, celebrated by flinging lots of brightly colored powders all over your friends. Mom has always loved the pictures of the celebrants and decided this was right up our alley. And because she is an equal opportunity partier, she shoe-horned some early Easter fun too...






Awesome idea, Mom.













First things first, we liberated the eggs.


















We're all about dumping.















The aftermath...

















This was so much fun that we did it again the next day. We obviously couldn't get any authentic Holi powders and the recipes I found for making them at home were pretty time intensive. We might do that next time, but as usual, this time Mom had to be resourceful. The first day, we used some materials we happened to have. Turmeric worked brilliantly for gold. The unsatisfyingly grayish blue was made mixing food coloring and flour. Green and red were powdered jello, which were too pale, although they did smell interesting. On day two, we hit a winner: grated sidewalk chalk.



Sometimes, Mom is brilliant. Special thanks to GM Kaki for the grater:


 

We borrowed an idea from another blog Mom's been following, called, Play Create Explore. Jessie has some really amazing ideas for toddler crafts! We took some regular old contact paper and taped it sticky side up to our tarp.










DUMP!


















As usual, the feet must be involved.



















A lot.













As you might notice in the video, he was having a hard time opening the smaller eggs. He started handing them to Mom to open, who would carefully hand them back for inspection.















Whereupon he dumped it in his face...

this is why Mom prefers non-toxic chalk

 

 

Update!
Yes, the contact paper footprints stick to glass! Here are instructions if anyone wants to try it: http://aiitx.blogspot.com/2012/03/contact-paper-prints.html