John finished up his semester last week and there really are not words for the kind of relief and happiness we felt around here about that. The last three weeks of the semester were truly the most insanely busy, stressful, and wretched weeks of his schooling career thus far. We still have many years left (1 in his masters, 3-5 for a PhD), and there will probably be more craziness to come, but honestly, I think those weeks will be hard to beat. We rarely saw him, he didn't sleep (one of the nights that he was up until 3:30 AM working on something, he came in to the bedroom to lay down only to have his alarm clock go off right then for work), and we were all feeling lonely and frazzled without him around. We are used to him being busy and occupied, but we aren't used to him being non-existent. He had knee surgery on Wednesday and truly, we were so excited about it because we knew it would mean that he could have a few days of down time to rest and hang out with us. We have taken full advantage of having him home this week and were pretty glad to have a low-key day at home to dye Easter eggs together. It ended up being a two day long event (John and I boiled the eggs together late one night, the next day we dyed and decorated eggs with the kids, and then that night John and I boiled and decorated some more by ourselves), and it was so much fun.
Here are the kids all ready to dye their first egg (or eggs, in Pearl's case-- she was not happy unless she had an egg in each hand).
Georgie was excited to watch his sister drop and egg in the dye. He kept encouraging her, "Come on, Peng, you can do it!"
She required much supervision. It was totally a disaster waiting to happen.
She was pretty happy when she plopped that egg down in the dye, and I love that you can see the dye on her fingers.
But then we wanted to let George enjoy himself and do his thing so we thought we'd put the Peachy Baby in her high chair to watch. Um, she was NOT amused.
Luckily her tears were nothing a little cheese bread couldn't cure.
Happy baby-- check. Now George could get to work. (Btw, the leg warmers were all George's idea. We put some on Pearl and he insisted on finding his and wearing them as well.)
George loved doing this so much.
He mostly did his eggs himself, but he did want a little help drawing Bowser (seriously) on one of them.
Pea started to get restless, so while George painted on some sparkles, Daddy walked with her down the hall. (She is loving walking these days. She mostly wants to walk while holding someone's fingers, but she is started to take steps on her own and keep her balance. She can do it if she wants to, but she frequently chooses to lunge/dive to where she wants to go instead of keeping her balance and walking.)
While George and I worked on an egg...
...John caught these little fingers swiping the scissors off of the table. It made us giggle and I was so happy John had the camera right there to snap the picture.
Mama and the babes with their eggies. (Please let's not talk about my bangs. I was growing them out until I saw these pictures. Now I am cutting them.)
Our eggs turned out so vibrant and pretty! This second picture shows why:
Could you see it? Here is a closer look:
We added drops of food coloring (neon and regular) to our dye baths to make the colors that we wanted. We played around with color combinations and ended up with so many cool eggs in the end. I only have pictures of the ones we did that afternoon, but that night John and I made some that turned out pretty good, too. Here is a look at the ones George and Pearl did.
I did not edit or saturate these pictures at all. This is really how bright they are, promise.
Before bed that night Pearl decided a little snack was in order, so she helped herself to her first hardboiled egg ever. At first she wasn't sure about it and kept smiling at us wondering what she was supposed to do with it. She took a few test licks to see what she thought...
...and then she went for it. She really liked it at first, but grew tired of it about halfway through.
Tomorrow should be a happy, full day, and we are so grateful to be celebrating Easter's miracles with people we love. More to come.
The trees really were almost fluorescent. Baby G got his exercise as he tried to negotiate running (sort of) up the hillside through weeds taller than him on uneven ground (read: he fell a lot).
Oh the fallishness! We are only sort of bad parents for letting our child wander around outside in October with his shoes off-- we had a pretty mild fall.
And this is where our fall adventures blow yours completely out of the water. Sure you went up the canyon and saw the leaves, too. But did you catch a glimpse of this as you wandered around?
I didn't think so. Yes, that is what you think it is-- a grown man in a knight costume having a professional photo shoot up in the woods. Totally normal. Yes, I did laugh about this the entire way down the canyon. And also yes, I still pull it out on occasion when I need a good chuckle.
This is where we are most likely a little different. Probably most of you didn't make your small children push the wheelbarrow full of pumpkins. Probably most of you let the small children ride in the wheelbarrow with the pumpkins. Not us. In our family we subscribe to the theory that the purpose of having children in the first place is so that they can do all the heavy lifting.
But once carved, was your child completely OBSESSED with the removable stem lids and did he spend hours taking one lid off and switching it with another? Our child did. If I needed some time to get something done I just stuck him out on the porch with the pumpkins.
He was likewise obsessed with the fire inside the pumpkins and went from one pumpkin to another "lighting" it. This is his first costume-- The Fancy Cowboy, complete with a sequined belt buckle and cow print chaps with fringe.
And then he'd bend down and get his face as close as he could to the flames. And instead of running to protect my child I just stood there and took pictures of it.
The cousins found it necessary to swap head attire. I like to refer to them as "pumpboys." Get it?
