Happy Easter!

We had a fantastic Easter. First, the kids got a box of goodies this week from Gaga and Papa O’Brien for Easter. Lots of books, a dollar bill for each of them, and a DVD. The kids were so excited! And Easter itself was great too. The sun was actually out and the kids didn’t need a winter parka. That hasn’t happened on an Easter since before we had kids. The kids woke up to see full Easter baskets with lots of goodies and were so excited. Their favorite new gift was a kite – Lauren got an Elmo one and Alex got a Winnie the Pooh one. They are so excited to go and fly a kite with us. Then the Easter Bunny had hidden eggs around our house so the kids had a blast trying to find those and seeing what treasures were hidden inside. How long before $1 bills are not super exciting to kids?  Thank you GG (my grandma, Betty) who so kindly sent us the eggs that my grandma and grandpa used to hide for all of us grandkids – I have so many fond memories of our Easter day egg hunts – and am very excited to start the tradition for my own kids! This morning Alex exclaimed, “This is a great day.” I was thinking “yes it is for many reasons.” And then he said, “Next it is Christmas!” Too funny. After church, we spent the day up at Drew’s parents, which was a very nice day for the kids and the adults. Thanks Nana and Grandpa for helping to make the kids’ Easter special – they loved their Easter goodies. And Drew’s birthday is on Tuesday so we celebrated with his family today and the kids loved helping Dad blow out his candles on his cake. And they loved helping him eat it too of course! Hope everyone had a great Easter as well!

Nickelodeon Universe

One of Alex’s favorite places ever is Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America. It’s an indoor amusement park. We went with some of our friends a few weeks ago and here’s some pics of our day. We had the best day with Sam, Audrey, and their mom, Kristi. Sam and Alex even went on some of the rides by themselves – of course sitting together – and I have quite honestly never seen Alex laugh so much in one day. He had the time of his life. He went on rides nonstop for over 3 hours, including roller coasters, bumper cars, a huge ferris wheel, etc. It was a fantastic day, I just love seeing Alex in his element like that. Maybe sometime soon I can take Lauren too, but she’s just a bit young and a bit too much to handle at a place like this right now. But she’ll have her day soon I’m sure!

Spring is here....maybe?

Well could it be, could spring actually be here? Can’t answer that but I can say that we have been enjoying some warmer weather lately! We’ve been outside with the kids a ton and they are having so much fun. We all got bikes this year and took our first family bike ride this weekend. We had a great time; the kids could not stop giggling. It was so funny. But I think Drew about died pulling close to 100 pounds behind him with the kids in the bike trailer. I heard more than a few moans and groans.  But we’ve been busy biking, playing with sidewalk chalk, blowing bubbles, and running around. They (and us) love the warmer weather. And it makes us parents very excited for the summer ahead of us – they are at such fun ages, we’re just so excited to do fun things with them outside. The Easter Bunny brought them a sprinkler (Alex is ready to run through it even though we need about another 2 months of warming up) and we are planning our first family camping trip for this summer. So many fun times to come!

Our friend Caeden

Alex has a friend, Caeden that we met almost 2 years ago in school. I know I’ve talked about him on here before. His mom and I have become great friends and we even got Caeden’s dad, Mike, and Drew together for pizza and beers one night. We have had a great time getting to know them. And Caeden has a little brother, Noah, and now every time Lauren sees a baby, she calls them Noah. One time I was holding another baby of our friend of ours, and Lauren runs up yelling, “No mama, no Noah.” Too bad this baby’s name was Annabel. As much as she loves babies, she’s not into sharing me with them. And Caeden’s mom’s name is Alicia and now Lauren has named her favorite baby, Alicia. So cute. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time with them and love having them in our lives. And now, Lauren LOVES Caeden. She just adores him. Smiles and laughs at everything he does or says. Follows him around, almost flirting if you will. And Caeden is so good with her. I now see how life will be 10-15 years from now, Lauren flirting with all of Alex’s friends. Oh he is going to hate it. He tolerates it now but even today exclaimed that Caeden is his best buddy but Lauren thinks Caeden is her friend too. Here are some pics from our last play date – the 3 musketeers if you will!

A little artist on our hands

Recently, Lauren LOVES to color. I mean LOVES to color. I bet she colors pictures for hours a day. As soon as she wakes up, it’s “I want to color.” And she’d rather do that right now than a lot of other things. And she is SO proud of her work. She’s always exclaiming, “Look it!” When we were at school last week, the teachers had out an art project that the kids could color and glue on pictures of spring things. She literally sat there for 25 minutes working on her art project. The teachers were amazed – couldn’t believe she had such a long attention span on something like that. Most toddlers (and even Alex today) spend about 1 minute creating an art project and then they are done. Not our Lauren, she’s so into it. It’s fun to see her creations.

Our Children's Museum Vist

A couple of weeks ago, we took the kids to the Children’s Museum again with Aunt Betsy. As always, they had a fantastic time! The new exhibit is Clifford the Big Red Dog so the kids were thrilled about that. And while we were having a picnic lunch in the atrium, guess who appeared…Clifford himself! He was dancing and giving kids hugs. Alex and Lauren were both really excited to see him, but if you know our kids at all – kept their distance. They actually petted him from behind, just his tail but wanted no hugs or handshakes or pictures taken with him. It was a great Saturday afternoon though and they loved that Dad was able to come with us. And so did Mom, makes my job a lot easier then!

Ice Skating

After begging all winter and telling me on a regular basis that his Dad was going to teach him how to ice skate, Alex finally went ice skating for the very first time. He was SO excited to put on his new skates, thought it was weird walking in them, and told us afterwards that the ice was “slippery.” But Dad and Alex had a great time (the 15 minutes Alex actually lasted). And on the way home, Alex told us that he just has to practice and then he’ll get good like his Dad. It was cute seeing him try something new!