Happy Easter!

Easter Egg Scramble

This morning our community had an Easter Egg Hunt at the community center. There was an Easter bunny, face painting, snacks, a huge train shaped bounce house and of course, an egg hunt. The hunt was broken up by age - under 3, 4 to 7, and 8 and up. The 4-7 and 8 and up were egg hunts, but the under 3 hunt consisted of a bunch of eggs mixed with balls and bean bags in a kiddie pool. Not much hunting going on - more of a scramble for 50 two year olds (and some kinda pushy parents) to grab as many eggs as they could, as quick as they could. I think if I knew it would be like this, I would have had Jack do the 4-7 egg hunt. But, we made the most of our "bobbing for eggs." Here, Jack and Charles are grabbing some eggs. Jack was more interested in the balls. After about 30 seconds, he turned to me, gave me his basket, and walked off. In his basket were the two eggs I gave him from the pool to show him what to do, 3 balls and a bean bag. I think maybe there were just too many kids for him.

After we were done with the egg hunt, we walked around a bit, played and Mommy talked with some neighborhood friends. Jack was really enthralled with the giant bounce house, but all the air rushing around in there was just too scary when he actually tried to go inside.

Along the way, we took some time to stop and smells the flowers....this "flower" is one of the few around. As you can see, it's still a bit cold up here - Jack did his end of April egg hunt in a sweater AND a winter coat!


With all the commotion, it was hard to find a quiet spot to stop and have a snack.

But we finally found a semi quiet area to "pop a squat" and enjoy some yummy goldfish.

Poor Emma was SO tired. The egg hunt was right in the middle of her morning nap time. And, sweet little Emma won't really nap anywhere but her crib or carseat in the car. So, she spent most of the morning fussing and looking half asleep, like in this photo. Can't wait for her to be a little older so she can join in the fun too!

Roaaarrrrrr!

This past weekend was absolutely beautiful in New England. While most of the east coast had a rough weekend, we just had a little rain and moderate wind on Saturday night...so we were able to enjoy two sunny days in the high 50's and low 60's!

On Sunday we headed to Boston and ended up at the Franklin Park Zoo. It's a small zoo - at least considering what we are used to in DC, Baltimore, and San Diego - but it was so fun! You can get really close to the animals and that was very exciting for Jack!

First, I need to give you a disclaimer for the photos - I left the camera battery charging in the car, so all the pictures are from our phones - sorry if the resolution isn't great!

We started off looking at the Zebras and Ostriches. We were about 2 feet from a huge ostrich...Jack kept pointing to it's feet....which were huge and really weird looking!

After that, we headed over to the big cats - and they did not disappoint.
Here Jack and Daddy are checking out the tigers.

Next we moved on to the lions. This male lion really put on a show for us. Every 5 minutes or so he would wake up, walk around and ROAR! Jack thought this was great and roared back at the lion. We spent at least 10 minutes watching this lion. When he was resting, the lion would roll on his back as if to say "rub my belly".

Here is the lion during his performance - ROAR!

Jack is checking out the lion - he didn't want to leave when it was time to move on!
SUPER close to the roaring lion!

Emma slept through the first half of the zoo. When she woke up, she spent some time looking at her own personal zoo - her friendly giraffe and vibrating worm.

Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of the absolute BEST part of our trip - the Gorillas! One of the gorillas has a 5 month old baby. Mommy gorilla is so cute - she carries her baby right up to the window and plops down so everyone can admire her and the cute little baby...and so she can do some people watching I think. When you look into a gorilla's eyes, there is an amazing connection - you can really see how much they are like us. When I walked up to the glass, I was holding Emma...who is only 2 months older than her little baby...but much bigger (funny since Momma gorilla is WAY bigger than me!) When I first walked up, the Mommy gorilla looked at me, looked me in the eyes, looked down at her baby, looked at me again and then looked at Emma for about 30 seconds. It was quite a moment, like we both acknowledged each other and that we shared something very special!

Of course we wore the kiddos out with all the zoo fun, so they caught some zzz's on the way home!

An EGGcellent Playdate

On Wednesday, we had a very fun playdate and a first for Jack - coloring Easter eggs! Things didn't start off well, there were a few tears when Jack had to put on the smock, but those tears quickly cleared up when he saw 6 bowls of brightly colored liquid

It took him a minute or two to figure out why we were putting eggs in this colored water, but soon he got the hang of stirring the egg around. And, when we pulled our first egg out and it was a beautiful red, all Jack could say was "Wow!"

We colored several hardboiled eggs and each of the kids (babies included) got to make a keepsake "blown" egg. Jack's is yellow with glitter and Emma's is robin's egg blue with glitter and her name written in white crayon.

A fun first and a great playdate with Charles and Bailey (who we will be missing soon when they both move to the west coast in a few short weeks)

Just a couple more pictures from Wednesday...

One sleepy baby!

Jack and Daddy walking in the rain.