Easter Sunday

Easter morning can be quite stressful when you do all the typical Easter stuff before church and you have 9:00 church. Thankfully we made it through finding all the Easter eggs and baskets and somehow managed to give baths and get ready for church and still make it there on time. But next year, I think we might be moving the fun stuff to Saturday morning and focus on the spiritual side of things on Sunday. 

I must admit that my favorite thing about Easter morning and having four girls, is dressing them up in their Easter dresses. They all looked so adorable and they felt beautiful too.

Easter Egg Hunts

We started off the day today by heading to my parents house for our first Easter egg hunt. The girls were so excited and quickly collected a bunch of eggs.

Ashlyn recently decided that purple is her favorite color and only picked up purple eggs while Emma didn't enjoy the hunt at all. I thought she might like to crawl around and pick up the eggs. But as soon as I set her down, she lifted her right leg up into the air because she didn't want it to touch the grass. Don't ask me why her left leg could touch it but not her right leg. After about fifteen minutes of holding her leg off the ground, she got tired enough that she started to cry and the hunt was over for her.  

Then we got to enjoy a lunch with hot dogs (good quality ones according to Josh, because I only buy the cheep ones) and visit with family while the girls played with their cousins.

Then we were off to Josh's parents for the second hunt. They recently started hiding a gold and silver egg with larger money in them mainly for the adults, but Kali's old enough that she understands the value of money and really wanted to find those eggs this year. Unfortunately, our family didn't find any of the big prizes. Brady found one and Danielle found the other.

After the Easter egg hunt, the girls got to swing at an egg pinata.

Thankfully it held up just long enough for each of the kids to get a turn. Kali was last and finished it off. And then we enjoyed our second barbecue of the day along with more visiting and family time. What a fun day!

Coloring Easter Eggs

Coloring Easter eggs is one of my favorite things to do around Easter time. The girls love it too and we ended up with some pretty cool eggs this year. I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but we bought a kit that gave them a metalic / marble look that was awesome.

Stairs

Now that this one is mobile, I've got to keep a close watch on her. She loves the stairs and could care less whether they're cement or tile. Not even a minute after I took this picture, she started to tumble down the stairs. Thankfully I was close enough to catch her before too much damage was done. I thought it might have been enough to scare her away from the stairs for a little while, but I was wrong. She loves stairs!!!

Chalk

Gotta love the Spring! Today was overcast and not too cold, so all four girls decided they wanted to color with chalk. What fun!

Bike

Look who has almost figured out how to ride a bike. I'm glad we have one that's small enough to fit her. She is such a determined little thing that she got on it once and insisted on riding it around the block even though she didn't know what she was doing. Thankfully I convinced her to go down the street a little way and then turn around rather than do the entire block, otherwise it would have been a long ride with me doing most of the work while pushing Emma in the stroller at the same time. After a while, she started to get the hang of it. Unfortunately I forgot to explain how to stop and she started gaining momentum and ran into this pokey tree. Thankfully she's none the worse for it--still has a smile on her face!

Pigtails

After three long years, Ashlyn finally has enough hair to put into pigtails. She was so excited when I told her what I was doing to her hair. But by the end of the day, she was no longer excited about it. Not sure if it's because they were bothering her or if she just didn't like the attention.

Ashlyn

Our cute little Ashlyn is now three. She had been telling people for months that it was almost her birthday. Thankfully 90 days and 10 days is all the same to her. It didn't seem to matter that her birthday was months away when she'd ask, she was simply excited that her birthday was coming up.

She chose pizza for her birthday dinner.

And Aurora for her birthday cake.

Some of the things we love about Ashlyn:

She loves Barbies. Rapunzel is one of her favorites, but she calls her Re-pun-punzel. She also really likes Ariel and Sleeping Beauty. Her favorite color has been pink for a long time but she has recently added purple to the favorite list too. She looks forward to going to aerobics in the mornings so that she can play with her best friend, Asia. She also likes to run errands with me and is constantly asking how many more stores we need to go to. She's disappointed when we're done and always tries to convince me to go to one or two more before heading home. She also loves her cousins but is often confused and calls them her friends instead of cousins and tells us that she's going to marry them (boys and girls alike). She has such beautiful big blue eyes, but they disappear every time she smiles into squinty little lines, especially when you're asking her to smile for a picture. She loves her baby sister, Emmalyn, and is usually in her face until Emma screams or hits her. She is also very independent, insisting she can do everything by herself including what her big sisters do. She's constantly telling us she loves us and insists on repeating it until you repeat it back to her. In the car, she loves to say, "Mom, mom..." until I look and ask, "What?" Then she says, "I love you." and giggles. I've started doing the same to her and it's our fun little game. Last of all, she loves to sing and can actually hold a decent tune for her age. But my favorite is when she sings at the top of her lungs. She's kind of hard to understand and her singing is no longer in tune, but she loves doing it.

Discovery Recital

Sadie had her Discovery recital tonight and did a wonderful job. The kindergartners got to dress up in their Sunday best and sing The Echo Song. It's always so fun to see them on stage.

St. Patrick's Day

Once again, a little leprechaun visited our house and brought some fun goodies for the girls. This year it was chocolate coins, green hair, nail polish, Golden Grahams, and the movie Hercules. Don't mind the bed hair in this picture. Thankfully Emma doesn't have any hair yet.

Since St. Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday this year, we had to find some way to incorporate green into their Sunday dresses. Cindy made my girls these super cute green dresses a couple of years ago and it just so happened that Kali's fit Sadie and Sadie's fit Ashlyn. But even better, Cindy gave me one that no longer fit one of her girls and it now fits Kali. The only one left out of the matching was Emma, but we still found a way to dress her in green and she looked just as cute.