My little artists

The kids spent the afternoon painting on our front porch. 

Alexa worked hard on her drawing of her stuffed toy unicorns. 

Next up... Bath time!

Spring Pictures

Alexa 7 years

Gavin 6 years

Tysen 4 years

Bowen 3 years

Erika 10 months

Such a sweet picture!

Love my matching girls!

The Easter Bunny came!

Gavin mentioned that everyone must know that he loves Pokemon cards...."Santa knew and apparently so did the Easter Bunny!"

Easter Egg Hunt

I just love our new neighborhood. An egg hunt was planned for all the kids a week before Easter. We walked (kids couldn't help but run they were so excited!) to the green space. 

They had decided that for each child you had participating, that you bring 2 dozen stuffed eggs. Yeah, that meant that I had to provide nearly 100 eggs since I had 4 kids eager to take part.

 (Side note: unfortunately I actually had to do about 200 eggs due to some poor judgement on my part. I was planning ahead and had gotten all 96 plastic colorful eggs stuffed with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups about a week early. I put them all in a large bucket and then decided to put it in Matt's office to keep the kids out of it. I figured if the kids saw it, they would scatter eggs all over the house. Later that night while I was working and Matt was at the gym with the kids, our dog Gabbi found the bucket of eggs. She figured out how to bite down on the plastic egg to pop it open and then she gobbled up 80 Reese's miniature peanut butter cups, foil and all. When Matt walked into his office that night, he was surprised to find plastic eggs everywhere. There was no chocolate or foil anywhere. He called MedVet and they calculated the amount of chocolate she consumed to not be toxic. The biggest concern was if she would pass all that foil or if she would get a bowel obstruction. The vet told us what to watch for. Gabbi never did even act like she felt bad. She acted complete normal and then on day 2, I started noticing foil in the backyard. It was frustrating to have to buy more candy and stuff that many more eggs, but it was better than a large vet bill or dog surgery.)

I had walked down and "hidden" all my eggs earlier that morning. I say "hidden" because they were pretty much just thrown everywhere. The wonderful thing about the parents proving 2 dozen eggs per child was that the ground was just covered. Eggs were everywhere! The kids were amazed. 

They were all proud of their eggs. 

One of my favorite Easter memories is finding a slip of paper inside one of my eggs from the Emerson egg hunt. The slip of paper said that I won the grand prize. It was a large container of bubbles and I felt so special. 

I decided to do some prizes for our neighborhood kids. It was pretty fun seeing all the kids walk up our sidewalk to claim their prizes. They were all so thankful and excited to match up their numbers. 

Happy 3rd Birthday, Bowen!

He's so proud of himself for figuring out how to hold up 3 fingers. 

Love his grin

Bowen got to pick what we did on his birthday. Last year he picked the bouncy house place. This year he picked swimming. He loves the water. Alexa and Gavin were on spring break from school so they were able to join in the fun. 

I was nervous about how I was going to handle 5 kids at the pool by myself, but they did really well. This was Erika's first time in the pool and she loved it. She splashed the whole time. 

There's Tysen wanting to snuggle his baby girl again. 

After the pool, we stopped at the grocery store so that Bowen could pick out his birthday cupcakes and balloon. (They also got free cookies in the bakery. They were starving after swimming so long so I agreed.)

So many choices....he ended up picking all blue cupcakes because Leonardo is his favorite ninja turtle and he wears a blue eye mask. 

Bowen's birthday fell on Good Friday this year so we went out to eat after church. The staff from Bob Evans came out and sang to Bowen. He thought that was pretty cool. 

We celebrated again on Saturday night just because :)

Life is good