Did Somebody Say Party? Easter Party!

Late Saturday afternoon after our egg hunt, we headed over to our friend's house for our annual Easter party with friends.  After perpetual winter, it was a perfect Spring day to hang out with friends, get some outside time and celebrate another holiday season together.

We all filled eggs and brought them to hide and the dads hid them.  We have to separate the bigger kids and the little kids because our bigger kids will mow over the little ones. ;)

The little girls were first for the egg hunt.  The Lilys actually were egg-cited despite this picture.  Charlie and Victoria were much more cooperative for the picture.

 Aaaaaaand they were off!  Running is something these girls love to do!

 Lexie {the other Lily's big sis} is great with the little ones and the Lilys wanted her help after a little bit.

Amy and I tried to get a picture of Lily and Victoria together and they were far from interested.  Lily wanted to wear her basket like a purse and Victoria was excited about her marshmallows.  

This picture literally makes me laugh everytime I look at it! 

 Next it was time for new eggs to be hidden and the bigger kids to have their turn. You can see they're pretty intense.

{Stef's pic}

 Never too old for an egg hunt. :)

Violet just watched this year. 

The other two babies, Liam and Amelia were adorable in a sweet little photo shoot that Violet wanted no part of.

{Stef's pics}

We had an easy supper and hung out the rest of evening with our best friends.   The kids colored eggs, played outside, played video games, played a board game for a really long time. There were no casualties. With 14 kids, that a feat.

My girls crashed pretty early {relatively} but were content sleeping on the couch while the bigger kids continued to play and the adults chatted. 

Sweet Liam wanted no part in going to sleep.  He hung in there with the adults for the duration.
{He and Violet have the same bunny jammies, but she simply wasn't cooperative that day for a picture together.}

We really love these times with our friends that are family and look forward to it every year! We need to be better about taking pictures of the grown ups, I've decided. :)

We're Going on an Egg Hunt

This past weekend we went to our township's annual Easter egg hunt.  This was Lily's 3rd one and Violet's first.   Violet's participation was simply for photos, of course. Andrew, of course, is always there as a sister helper.

The last two years it's been really cold, so we were thrilled when the weather called for a warm, sunny, finally Spring day!  Lily was excited to get started, waiting patiently for the signal to go find her eggs.

And she was off and running!  Each participant is supposed to get 12 eggs and then turn them in for a goodie bag.  We let her get Violet's as well.  Since it's hard to tell a kid to stop at 12 eggs when the fun is finding them and putting them in the basket, we just toss anymore than the 12 eggs back out into the field. :)

Lily's hunting this year was very specific.  All pink. 

There actually were a ton of other people there, but we go way out in the field so Lily has room to run and I don't end up with a bunch of strangers in my pictures. :)

While Lily was gathering Violet's eggs, I took some pictures of Violet. 

Of course, there's always some family shots to be taken. 

These pictures are as real as it gets trying to get a stubborn toddler to pose for a picture when she doesn't want to. 

After the picture fun, we headed into the community center for Lily to do some crafts and determine whether an Easter bunny visit would take place on our part. 

She had a lot of fun with the crafts and this year was old enough to do much of it with little help. :)

First, was a bunny frame. Andrew helped with the snacks. 

Then Lily and Daddy made bunny masks for she and Violet.

She also made a lily that was made from tracing and cutting out her hand! 

I loved this craft best. :)

In another room, they had an area for coloring and painting with bingo daubers which Lily was super excited to do! She is very into coloring, drawing, painting, writing with chalk etc. these days.

Daddy, Andrew and Violet waited patiently for us.

There was a "lily-pop" tree and since those are Lily's favorites, she was excited when she not only got a lilypop, but her stick had a red bottom and she won a prize! A cute little pink bunny with string legs. 

We decided to wait on the Easter bunny and make that its own special day with the girls, so no bunny visit that day, but he was there!   After winning her prize, we went out to lunch which we rarely are able to all do together so that was a fun treat. We had our friend Easter party to go to later in the day, so after lunch we headed home for the kids to rest before part two of our fun Easter events!  

I love going to these types of events in our township and this year was the best so far. It was super organized, lots of helpers and a ton of stuff to do. There was also facepainting, Andrew's marching band ran the concession stand with lots of goodies to eat, and the fire department had a couple trucks for the kids to be able to climb in, put on fire helmets and firefighters to talk with the kids.  

The Easter egg hunt is one of my favorite events of the year!

St. Patrick's Day 2014

St. Patrick's Day isn't one of those gift holidays in our house, but a little green milk with breakfast, some paper shamrock plates to have our supper on and it makes me happy to celebrate this day with my little family.

When Andrew was little, we'd have green scrambled eggs for breakfast or green pancakes.  This year, I opted for a run for green doughnuts with my Lily love.  She's a total doughnut girl, so this was perfect! She was excited about her green milk after inquisitively looking into her cup.

Violet turned 5 months old on her 1st St. Pat's Day which was exciting to nobody, but me! haha  Remember all her firsts are my lasts...so I'm celebrating them all. :)

I donned my girls in some of their luckiest clothes for the day too, of course. Andrew wore green too, though he kept his hoodie on all day at school. Reagan didn't wear green...bummer for her.

Lily also called it "Paddrick's Day" which I love and her shirt had "paddricks" on it too. 

No one was excited about having corned beef brisket for supper, so I compromised and planned on our version of reuben sandwiches for supper along with some pierogies.  I told George we'll call them Studdards.  Reubens minus the kraut and thousand island.  This will only be funny to us because we remember dumb stuff, but totally us!  Lily and I made pre-cut-out shamrock cookies for dessert. She loves to bake and I wanted easy.

 

After supper, Lily worked on a treat for her preschool class for the next day.

Easy peasy stuff to do to make another day special for my family.  That makes me happy!