Sunday, March 23, 2008

Eggs-celent Day

Happy Easter! We had a great day full of easter-egg hunting (in the house of course since there's a freakin' foot of snow outside!!!!!) and TONS of candy! Every single year, Grant is appalled at how much candy the kids have. My family always sends some candy, and then two of our neighbors give the kids full-on Easter buckets filled with candy, and then of course "the Easter Bunny" (wink, wink) brings candy. Every year Grant acts like he's never seen so much candy in his life. I've seen his dad act the exact same way, so I think it's a learned reaction that will continue every year the rest of our marriage no matter the actual sugar quantity (he does the same thing every Christmas, too). Then, we went to church for our Easter program. It was great, although the best part, as usual, was when the Primary sang. You know how there's always a memorable kid when the Primary sings, one who everyone is laughing at and then talking about the rest of the day? Well, this time that was my son. This was his first time to go up with the Primary to sing and you'd think he would have been shy or at least try to blend in a little. Oh, no, not Cole. He screamed the entire song at the top of his lungs. When I say at the top of his lungs, I mean the top of his lungs. "DID JESUS REALLY LIVE AGAIN, YES WHEN THE THIRD DAY CAAAAAAME!!!!!!!!" He was louder than all of the other 50 kids combined. He was yelling so loudly that his face was turning red. And his facial expressions were top-notch, too. Eyes big, head tilted, mouth wide. The congregation could not have been more delighted. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. I would give anything to have been able to videorecord his little performance since words do not do it justice. The best part is that everyone in the audience thought that he was just innocently singing his little heart out, which I'm sure added to the charm. Only Grant and I knew that he was singing like that to deliberately stick it to me. I was the one who conducted the kids and when we were practicing the week before I had talked to them about singing loudly, but making sure they didn't scream. So, during practice all Cole did was scream. I talked to him about it that day and I talked to him about it during the week, trying to get him not to scream. I thought our little discussions might have worked, but nope. Cole had to show me who was boss. Oh, well. At least it was entertaining. One more element I forgot to mention was that standing next to Cole was Claire, who was crying the whole time. She had thought she was going to stand by me when they were singing and so she cried the whole time because she couldn't. So, you have my one child screaming his lungs out and next to him was my other child bawling her eyes out. I'm sure everyone thinks we're quite the melodramatic family. It made for a very memorable Easter for us, at least!
Grant is being "the bunny monster"

The only bad part of our Easter, the snow:

Or Not...

Ok, so forget about seeing grass. We just got about a foot of snow during one of the worst snow storms of the season on Friday. WISCONSIN WINTERS BITE!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Our Little Ava LuLu

I have a few videos of my sweet little girl that I need to post, especially for my family. The first one is of her throwing and running after a ball. The second one is of Grant reading her a board book with flaps - her favorite. The last two are of her saying "hi." Enjoy!







Monday, March 17, 2008

Let There Be Grass...

Yes, we've seen the first sightings of what we seem to remember is called "grass." It's brown and mushy, but hey at least it's not dirty white snow. Cole pointed out the window of the car the other day and shouted in amazement, "Mom! Look!" I couldn't tell what he was talking about until he finally said, "I see grass!" Yes, that's how long it has been since we've seen grass - it was as exciting to my son as if a dinosaur was stomping around outside or a bulldozer was tearing down our house. We definitely all have spring fever. Saturday was sunny - it was still only at most 40 degrees outside, but it felt practically balmy to us. The kids dressed in shorts and kept saying "It's summer!" I remember growing up in Houston and wearing huge winter coats when it was 65 degrees out. It's all relative, huh? But, we'll take anything even close to Spring that we can get out here!