Easter

Easter fell on April 4th this year so a busy weekend of birthdays and Easter egg hunts. Easter itself began with awakening to see what the Easter bunny left, followed by church, and then dinner at the Miltons.

This year the Easter Bunny hid baskets. I guess he decided that the girls were getting to big to just leave them sitting out so now they were going to have to work a bit to see what he has brought. This year he brought Abbie some flip flops, books, a Care Bear movie, and some clothes.

The Easter Bunny brought Rylee some clothes and a my little pony. Rylee has decided she's not a big fan of pictures but I snapped one anyway even with a tear.


Ah, all pretty and dressed up and ready for church.

Tante Lilli was a good helper for Rylee while I took pictures and videoed. Rylee was still confused about the whole process of searching for eggs. When she found the first egg she wanted to see what was in that one and eat it rather than look for a whole bunch and then open up to see her goodies. If it wasn't for Tante Lilli the other three kids would have snatched all the eggs and Rylee would have just gotten one.

Rylee, put that egg down and look for another!

Ah, big sister is willing to stop the search and help her little sister too!!

I love these two so much!

EASTER.....TAKE TWO!!!

As usual, I have a habit of overdoing things. I thought that after we hunted eggs at Greg and Tracy's the girls would still want to come home and hunt for more eggs. It never occurs to me, year after year, that they may be exhausted when they get home and reach a point of not even caring about more candy or treats. Thankfully, the Easter Bunny was understanding and agreed to hide the eggs as a special treat for Abbie on her birthday. So we got up on her birthday and went out to hunt eggs again. This time Rylee understood more what the process was all about and started to collect her own eggs.

What's with the scowl birthday girl??

Circus

The annual circus tradition this year didn't work out as planned. Our circus tradition is usually to go with Grandma Nate, Lilli, John, Haley, and the Woods family. This year it was so busy that we couldn't work out schedules to all get to go at the same time. We were trying to get ready for Abbie's birthday, Easter, plus plan around work schedules so the ONLY time that the whole Virts family could attend the circus as a family was Saturday, April 2nd at the 7 pm show. Jeremy and I consider ourselves to be fairly intelligent parents so we knew taking a 16 month old to the evening circus could be a disaster, but we decided to take our chances anyway. Abbie loves the circus and always starts asking when it's coming right after Christmas so to try to skip it for a year wouldn't fly. We arrived early, as usual, so Abbie could ride the animals.

The annual elephant ride

Abbie still loves to ride the ponies.

What toy did Abbie talk us into this year...a light-up saber. Woo Hoo! We made it to almost the end...we walked out during the motorcycles in the sphere (those of you who attend the annual Shrine circus know that it doesn't change from year to year). How did we make it so that late with a 16 month old? We bribed her with food...fries, nachos, ice cream!! Yum Yum!

Easter Egg Dying

The girls and I did our Easter egg dying this year on April Fools Day! I love to dye Easter eggs and so does Abbie. Rylee got in and attempted to dump and drink the dye so she was quite a helper. Abbie and I love to make the two tone ones the best.

Our finished product, minus a few that we had to try to make sure they were OK!

Nursery Rhyme

Abbie's last big hurrah at Holy Spirit was memorizing and reciting a nursery rhyme on March 29, 2010. She came home with a sheet of paper saying "Mary Had a Little Lamb." So when Abbie and I sat down and began to talk about what she wanted to wear and begin to practice Abbie told me, "Mrs. Brown said I could do as many verses as I want to." What? How many verses were there to Mary Had a Little Lamb? Apparently more than Mary having a lamb and it going everywhere that Mary went.

Turns out there are MANY verses and so Abbie and I decided to do four and stopped with making the kids at laugh to see a lamb at school. It also worked out perfectly that Abbie was Little Bo Peep for Halloween and Rylee was her lost sheep so Abbie wore the costume as Mary and even wanted to take Rylee as her lamb. I felt Rylee might be a distraction during the reciting since she is the type of lamb that truly would try to make the kids laugh and play and Abbie would lose her 4 verses of fame. I convinced Abbie to dress up a doll in the lamb costume instead and she thought that was a good idea.

Abbie was the first one to present her nursery rhyme and so she was a little timid and hard to hear but recited all 4 verses perfectly. I recorded it on the video camera that I can't transfer to the computer but I do have it to show to the future husband in 30 years!

Little Prayer

Mondays are always a chaotic day for Abbie but I enjoy our time together very much. We head to German class then time for a drive-thru before heading to dance class. Tonight we were sitting in the drive-thru at Wendy's and out of the blue here is the conversation that Abbie had with me.


"Mom I just said a little prayer."

"Really, what did you say?"

"I just thanked God for a wonderful mom, wonderful dad, baby sister. Oh, and my puppy."



I stopped and prayed then too...."Thank you God for blessing me with such an amazing daughter."

Family Day on March 21

The end of March brought a need to get outside for our "family day." Jeremy thought he might try his hand at woodworking and make some sea kayaks. We'll see..he has an awfully lot of other hobbies and jobs currently on his plate. This child's kayak was given to him during this horse trading of guns and kayak making materials...now all we need is one for everybody else!

A little game of Velcro ball

Spring photos

March 15th, 2010 was Abbie's 2nd Pre-K school photography session. She picked out her outfit, pink of course, and she unhappily agreed to let me curl her hair.

Check out those eyebrows! She is definitely a Faber...those eyebrows are just like Opa's!