I give that a Cathy "ACK"!

{A la the comic strip. SNL, anyone?}

A whole week with no blogging? Dang. Sure isn't for lack of content. So, here we go.

Anna-Kate and I dyed eggs (with the insides taken out and cleaned) to make cascarones {confetti filled eggs that one can crack over someones head. I grew up in south Texas. It is completely nostalgic for me). She really got in to it!



Ryan had his party at school on Thursday. They had an egg hunt (I believe he will be my competitive one. All of the kids ran towards the playground part looking for eggs while Ryan ran around the edge of the playground, opposite to the other kids, and scooped up tons of eggs!). The kids went inside to a yummy pizza lunch with carrots, strawberries, cookies and peeps. Guess what my son ate first. Yep, blue peep. It was fun to have my mom in town and Ryan loved having his Nana at his party (Mom and I attended a history (founding fathers) of gardening seminar the night before. Here's the history dork in me, I actually enjoyed it--but for different reasons than the rest of the gardening people there loved it).

Serious egg hunting



Excited and surprised to see Nana!



With my sweet boy!



Blue peep



Happy kids after party # 1. :)



The following day was Anna-Kate's party. I was late getting to school {for once, through no fault of my own} and missed her egg hunt, I was sad, but she seemed pretty un-phased. Not sure if that is good or not. :) We had almost the exact lunch from the day before then went home for naps before heading to church for a Good Friday service.

Ryan and Lydia praying {love his effort to keep his eyes closed}



Anna-Kate with her "buddy team", (aka best friend} Campbell.



My sweet girl.



Anna-Kate with her teacher, Ms. Mandy



Saturday morning we woke up and headed back across town for our church preschool egg hunt. We had such a great time! This is me relaxing in my old age. We've never been to the picnic because it is far away and butts up to naptime, but we did it this year and enjoyed seeing our church family in a casual atmosphere--a new annual thing for our family that won't be missed! Here's my attempt at a kid shot. Epic fail on my part...this is picture attempt number fourteen. This was also as we were leaving. Sugar high was waning and sleepiness was setting in. O well. :)



That afternoon was our neighborhood egg hunt. The kids had a great time, as always. This is Jack's first egg hunt (Chris and I had a misunderstanding so Jack missed his age group that morning. I may or may not have over-reacted over that issue. I suppose Chris was right. He wasn't forever scarred and was able to have an egg hunt experience. :) ).

With my precious "baby". {boo to growing up too fast!}



He follows directions well. Even though he doesn't speak much, if I tell him to do something, (ie, go get the egg and put it in your basket) he will.



Anna-Kate with her friend Annie.



Sunday morning we woke up and headed to church early. Chris was ushering that week so we had to get there about 8:45. The worship service was beautiful and the kids behaved well (it was a "family" service--aka, no Sunday school for kids so they were in there with me...and Chris was ushering and not there, goodie. :) ). After church we headed down to my parents' house for a big family lunch.

Family picture (clearly, Ryan doesn't perform under less than ideal circumstances. Ideal circumstances defined as: him not hot.)



I bought a football cake pan a while back and decided to be "fun mom" and make an egg cake for Easter. Unfortunately, I was extremely tired Saturday night (or at least I will chose to blame tiredness) and put peppermint extract instead of {clear} vanilla extract into my icing. In Chris' words, "wow, it tastes like Crest". So, threw it away and had to make new icing and decorate the thing at my parents' house day of. Not how I like to roll, but the kids' appreciated it and I thought it turned out cute.



Ready for an egg hunt!



I told the big kids to leave all of the yellow eggs for Jack. I filled his with goldfish and he couldn't have been happier as he sat there eating his treats as the big kids ran around gathering all 1 million eggs (I totally "re-gifted" the eggs from egg hunts from the past few days. I mean seriously, how much candy does a kid need?).



She is great at finding the "hard" to find eggs.



Ryan was only interested in blue and orange eggs (not "girl" ones) until he saw Anna-Kate had twice as many as him. :)



I could positively eat him up!





I admit to slight bias, but I don't know that I have seen a more beautiful baby--I am crazy about this boy! :)



My cousin, Philip, is a senior and plays baseball. My parents' took the kids to one of his games when they had them a couple of weeks ago and Ryan has been obsessed with baseball ever since. Here they are looking through baseball pictures with him--this is HUGE for Anna-Kate as she usually has nothing to do with boys/men! And, in fact, they both requested to sit next to Philip at dinner...lucky guy, had a kid on each side. I'm not sure he was impressed with his honored status. :) ha!

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