Easter, Part II

We went to the lake the Sunday before Easter to celebrate Luke and Jake's birthdays (yeah...Luke got to celebrate his 32nd three different times). Grandma had an Easter Egg hunt for all the kiddos.

Joe has evidence of the hunt all over! :) That kids loves sweets.

The littles looked all over and then hid them again for a second round.



And there was some fishing, too. The weather was in the upper 80's! 

And a little croquet, with the always-necessary-superman-mask, obviously.



S'mores

More s'mores with family in the backyard.

 Joe's saving some for later.

Happy Birthday Luke-y

He loves when I call him Luke-y.

Anyways, this is pretty much a post devoted to how awesome I am, so if that sounds annoying, you can skip this.

For Luke's birthday, I skipped gift giving (not that we really give gifts anyway) and decided to make a nice meal for the two of us.

We are paying down debt right now with the long term goal of taking a trip to Italy, so I put together an authentic, (more or less) Italian meal.

We had fried mozzarella, grilled cheese bread, homemade pasta with homemade red sauce, broccoli with oil and garlic and finally frozen vanilla custard.

We also had red wine from Italy (thanks mom and dad).



It took a pretty good chunk of the day to get the meal ready, especially given that I got lots of "help" from little people. We put the kiddos down and enjoyed a candle light meal--proving that date night is still possible on a budget!

Easter, Part I

We LOVE the Y here in town. At least one person in our family (usually me) is there every day of the week. The gal in charge of Child and Family activities is really awesome and I feel very comfortable leaving the littles for 45 mins to an hour a few times a week so that I can get some exercise in.

They also have some great family programs. Last weekend they had Easter egg hunts with real bunnies.

As you would probably assume, Leo didn't really get the hang of finding eggs at all this year, but he did know that he was supposed to be excited, so he'd run around squealing and laughing.



Leo went by himself and the three older boys went together.

No way I was going to convince Jackson to take a group picture (predictably).



"Check out the haul I'm taking home, Patrick!"



And Easter Egg dying! Fun for the kiddos and no mess for me clean up. Best of both worlds. :)

Time for a party

Well, this kid (Patrick) is potty trained. Hooray! One down....one to go (well...technically, two down, two to go)

But, this one has been fighting HARD against me. Any mention of underwear or the potty brings tears and giant fits. Jackson is pretty proficient at throwing fits, actually. Luckily he has a super cute little smile.



I'm starting to get a little desperate. I'm not too thrilled with taking my 3 year and 3 month old little boy out of church carrying a diaper and wipes still. Yesterday I told him I'd throw him a party if he got potty trained--complete with balloons, presents, cake, the whole sha-bang! (Yep. We definitely do bribery in our house) He told me "Mom, if you throw me a party, you will break it!"