The Grandmas and the Papas

Our trip up for my brother's wedding was a bit of a whirlwind.  We drove up last Wednesday.  Greg's parents also drove down, so for Thursday, the girls had quite the audience for their antics.

First, the girls got Papa G to build a stool for them for the bathroom.

Then, Papa set up an Easter egg hunt for them had trouble finding all of the eggs that the Easter bunny hid, and the girls are nothing if not helpful.

The weather was a little dodgy - periodic short little rain showers, so we were inside and back out all day long.  Inside, we played "memory" and helped clean up.

It did clear up for long enough to go to the park, though.  (Hm, it rained on the way there, and then it started raining again as we were leaving...)

Julie monkey

They were brave and tried out some new things that they weren't big enough for last time, like this little bridge.

They were also spider monkeys on the rope web.

Emma wasn't too sure of it though - that look of terror on her face is genuine.  She did just fine, though.

Aunt Victoria and Uncle Dan got all three girls on the tire swing.  Oh, they loved it!  Look at their hair flying!

They were so dizzy when they got off ... stumbling around.  It was pretty funny. 

Uncle Dan and Becca.  They get along a lot better now that there aren't diapers to change.  :)

I went to the Disney store while we were there, since we don't have one around here, and the girls are just flat out obsessed with Mickey Mouse Club House.  I got the girls some Minnie Mouse cars, which they loved, and raced around the house with Grandma and Papa, and then later with Uncle Dan and Aunt Victoria.  (I love these pictures Greg got from floor level.)

Easter

I didn't realize how far behind I'd gotten in blogging until I realized I was just getting to Easter.  We had a really laid back Sunday.

We went downstairs and found some eggs and our baskets.

And we had just a little bit of candy before for breakfast.  The big hit of the Easter baskets were the Minnie Mouse Pez dispensers (that I bought in January with the intent of giving them for Valentine's Day, but then forgot).  They kept telling Minnie "thank you for giving me candy!"

After we got all sugared up, we went to the park.  These pictures just make me realize how much they've grown.  I remember when Becca couldn't get on the airplane by herself.

Love her hair flying.

This one of Emma just makes me smile.  Even though it looks like there's a pole coming out of her head.

Julie, waving.

Becca just looks so big here.  Sigh.

Julie was so proud of herself for doing these steps all by herself.

Greg is such a good sport.

You might notice that they all have matching shirts on.  And, you might notice that you never see that in these parts.  :)  They're Mickey Mouse shirts, and I feared the fight that would erupt from having just one.

Dear City We Live In,

The first ever town Easter Egg Hunt you hosted on Saturday was perhaps the poorest planned public event I have been to in recent memory.  It reminded me all too much of this story in recent news.

First, traffic to get into the park was ridiculous.  Police should have been controlling the traffic lights to get into the event like they were to get traffic out of the event.  The lack of parking was also due to poor planning - did no one realize that parking one row of cars with a space in between takes more space than parking two rows front to back with a space after two rows of cars?

There were registration booths, with no clear intent of what "registration" meant.  We got age category bracelets that were never checked, and the hunt location signs for bracelets quickly became useless.

How did you not anticipate a stampede when people were only allowed to enter the "egg field" on one short edge of the rectangle?  If you weren't at the front of the herd, you didn't get anything.  If your children weren't aggressive, you didn't get anything.  Scratch that - if your parents weren't aggressive and greedy and putting eggs in their children's baskets, you didn't get anything.  Three three-year-olds and no eggs?  Really?  What a fabulous community event.

Chalk it up to my hatred of large crowds of people.  I try to temporarily suppress that to try to do something fun for the kids.  But we certainly won't be returning next year.

Luckily, I was much more upset pissed off than my kids were.  And some very nice little kids gave the girls a couple of eggs.  And seeing the looks on their faces as they watched the helicopter dump eggs on the field made it all worth it.

A helicopter and a few pieces of melted chocolate can make a little girl's day.  But a mob of greedy parents ruined my afternoon.

The rest of last weekend

We had a really full Saturday last weekend.  But it was a good dose of family fun.

After the two egg hunts, we went to Costco.  Julie and Becca started randomly doing what I can only call "hug wrestling."  Every time they'd get up, one or the other would start saying, "Do me, do me!"

By the time we got home and unloaded from Costco, we had just enough time to pull out all the crap stuff from their Easter eggs and scatter it all around the house before we headed out for pizza and to celebrate our friend Lisa's birthday.

Oh, and we did have time to apply a Smurf tattoo to Julie before we left.

We got home and it was still light out, so we played out in the yard for a while.

Checking out the "baby leaves."

We were about to head inside when Becca about fell up the front steps.  Apparently she saw a caterpillar on the front porch and it scared the crap (figurative) of her.  Greg came and got it and put it in a bucket full of weeds he'd just pulled from the front yard.  Once they could study it, they weren't terrified of it anymore.  Don't get me wrong - - they didn't want to touch it.  But I don't think they were afraid of it attacking them.

He she is in the middle of the bucket in the first picture.

Julie was really curious.  She giggled and said, "I like her!"

Emma fed the caterpillar one of her "flowers" before we headed in.  They were disappointed when we didn't see her the next day.

Speaking of the next day, at some point on Sunday, I spotted this:

That would be an upside down kitchen booster seat stuffed with Easter eggs.  Not sure whose work this was.