He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

What a beautiful Easter Day! We went to church this morning and they had an easter egg hunt afterward. Seriously...way too many egg hunts this year! The weather has been perfect although it is pine pollen week here in Georgia. Everything is yellow from the pollen. It takes over! I was driving down the road today and the sky was actually yellow! Being used to southern California smog I thought that maybe that was what it was...but no...just pollen. :)
Yesterday we celebrated Easter with Shane's family. It was so nice! Another beautiful day and we all sat on the deck while the kids played. We had a great dinner, the kids loved looking for eggs and I got some really great pictures.

Little Kingston

Shane and Kingston

Shane, Natalie and Rose Marie

Rose Marie and Jayden

Shane, Sabrina and Justin

Grandma, Grandpa and the newest Grandbaby

Rose Marie and Natalie

Ava blowing bubbles...great smile!

Heidi looking for eggs

All the kids with their easter eggs

Little Heidi Bear

Heidi is 18 months old. She is hysterically funny...she definitely has her own personality. It's hard to capture her looks on camera. She has so many of them and she is really quick! She learned a lot of new words last month. Her list so far is...Mommy, Daddy, cheese, Bumpa, Natalie (Na Ya), De De, Nana, outside, banana, no no no no no, down, and all done. She has no fear and is a crazy daredevil. You should see all her bruises, cuts and scrapes! She goes down the slide, swings on the big girl swing and does not want help with anything. But the funny part is that she is very much a shy momma's girl who doesn't go near anyone she doesn't know very very well. :)

My Natalie

I can't believe how much Natalie is growing up. She just seems so much older every single day! I love these pictures of her. She loves wearing headbands...as long as she can put them on herself. She kinda looks like Olivia Newton John in Get Physical. :)

Natalie absolutely loves this puzzle that Matthew made for her last year. She just figured out how to actually make it work and will play it over and over again.

Happy Easter...A Week Early!

We did an Easter Egg hunt last Sunday with my family. We did it a week early so that it wouldn't interfere with an Easter egg hunt with Shane's family and so that we could go to church Easter morning.We decorated eggs Saturday and then let the girls hunt for them Sunday morning...just like when I was a kid. Although, when I was a kid we only did ONE Easter egg hunt! We had so much fun. It's so great as a parent to share these moments with your kids.

I put Heidi's hair in pigtails for the first time...so cute! She looked absolutely adorable!

The girls all played together on the swing set before we started coloring eggs. Cousin Nokie doesn't really like to smile for the camera! Heidi just started swinging in the big girl swing. She will not swing in the baby swing anymore! She wants to be just like her big sister. :)

We tried letting Natalie put eggs in the dye but that didn't work too well. We ended up letting her put stickers on the eggs after we dyed them. Which worked for the most part except when she dropped the eggs or squished them because she pushed too hard. Nokie colored on the eggs with the wax crayon and then Dana would dunk them in the dye. They were both pretty happy with the set up.

Daddy showed Heidi how the dye worked. He'd drop in a white egg and it would come up pink. She thought that was pretty cool.

Natalie got so many eggs! She just ran around picking up everything she saw.

Nokie had never done this before so it took her a while to catch on, but once she did she did great.

Heidi took over the play area...she found every egg in that section. I was surprised again by how well she did. She has great eyes!

Natalie found 20 eggs

Heidi found 13 eggs

Nokie found 9 eggs

First Easter Egg Hunt

I went to my very first Mom's Club yesterday. It was really fun. It was nice to meet so many moms with kids the same age as mine. It was an Easter social. Since it was my girls' first Easter egg hunt, I thought I'd put them in their new dresses. They looked so cute! They just didn't want me taking any pictures. I don't know what the deal is lately but whenever I pull out my camera, Natalie covers her face and Heidi runs away. It's funny now but super frustrating when I'm trying to take a pictures!! I need some creative tips to get my kids to smile for me or at the very least stay put while I take a picture!! I've been trying for months to get a good shot of the two of them together and still no luck! At least I was able to get some cute ones of them by themselves.





My girls absolutely loved Moms Club! They had so much fun. Natalie loved the craft table. She spent pretty much the whole time there decorating paper eggs with stickers. Heidi loved all the kids and all the toys. She just did her own thing for most of the time. I think her favorite part of the day was getting to eat an Easter egg cookie with sprinkles! I wasn't sure if they would understand the whole concept of hunting for eggs but I shouldn't have worried. Nat was so excited! She could barely wait for them to hide the eggs. She ran everywhere, picking up the eggs and putting them in her basket. She actually dumped some of the candy out of her eggs cause she didn't know what they were. :)

Heidi loved looking for eggs too. She didn't want to hold the basket though. She wanted me to hold the basket while she found the eggs and then she would walk over and put them in the basket. When I actually gave her the basket to hold she dropped all the eggs but she made sure she picked them up really quick before any of the other little kids picked them up! I was really surprised that they both figured it out so quickly. I just didn't think they were old enough. They proved me wrong! All Natalie can talk about is when she gets to do it again. :)

I'm still trying to figure out how to work this blog. I've been messing around with it all day trying to figure it out. Hopefully I've figured out a few things. What do you think about the new layout? Is it a keeper or should I just switch back to the old look?

Heidi's First Haircut

We took Heidi to get her first haircut today. She had a rough morning, didn't nap well and I was kinda nervous that she might freak out. But she did really well! Yay!! They had all these toys to play with while we were waiting. She loved riding the little horse/zebra. And she loved that she got to sit in an airplane! The hairdresser?? Not so much. She did good though. We brought teddy grahams and she watched Sprout while the lady cut her hair. The hairdresser worked really fast and was really nice. She even put a pink bow in her hair.

We got Natalie's first haircut at the same place...actually in the same chair! She was just under a year old. Her hair grows a little faster I guess. :) Makes me so sad...feels like just yesterday that she was getting her first haircut! She loved it when she went. I can't believe how small she was. They get big sooo fast!

Before...

After