Easter 2011

Easter this year was spent in New Jersey at Pop and Nana's house.  It turned out to be a beautiful weekend with gorgeous spring weather on Easter Sunday and we had such a nice time visiting with family, partaking in the Easter festivities and, most importantly, celebrating Jesus' resurrection!

Below we are doing the annual ritual of dyeing Easter eggs except that this year we are dyeing them Star Wars style.  I picked up a Star Wars kit at Target that was a huge hit with our little fanatics.  Oh, how wrapping pastel eggs in Yoda shrink wrappers could enliven two little boys" holiday so much more! :)

Abby, all smiles with her favorite Poppy and Nana!

I love my sister!

After all of the excitement of the day, the Easter Bunny came while the little ones were all sound asleep...

Here we are, all dressed in our Easter finest, enjoying some time with Pop, Nana, Uncle Mike and Aunt Chang before heading home in time for our evening church service where we had even more fun with some of our friends, celebrating the rebirth of Christ!

Our prettiest little Easter girl with her huge hair bow.  Love her :)

The usual sibling picturre as of late:  Abby looks beautiful, Nate looks bored and Ben looks constipated :).  Nate's practiciting his James Dean look for when J. Crew calls him to model some of their kid clothing in all of his rugged, 3 year old masculinity :)

Our family of 5, doing the blue and purple thing :).  I just love me a good color-coordinated family picture :)

Poor little Natey had a rough few days of no naps....here, he (and Daddy) are taking a rest after brunch while watching sports. 

Finally, it was so much fun to see Uncle Mike and Auntie Chang for the day!  Our newest cousin is only 3 months shy of making his appearance and we cannot wait for next Easter, when he will be here with all of us :)

Two boys, Two bikes

You start to think that certain things are the norm when you have an extremely cautious child like Benjamin.  Such as being terrified of even getting onto a bicycle until he is over 4.5 years old.  But once he did, he took off and now loves riding his bicycle.  In fact, he loves it so much that after having his first bike for only a year and really only riding it for a few months in the fall, it was time for our tall boy to get a new bike that was more size-appropriate now that he had gotten over his fear of the big and scary 12" monster.

Enter Natey, the three year old who will try so many new things (as long as it doesn't involve eating it!) and strives to do anything that his cool big brother does.  So, what a surprise when I glanced out my kitchen window one afternoon to see him riding Benjamin's old bike across our driveway, never having had a single lesson at all.  He just took off and has not looked back since.  Benjamin's old bike has now become Nate's bike and because Ben only had it for such a short period of time, it looks brand new.  Ben now rides a bigger bicycle that he got for his birthday this year, which will hopefully last him for a few more seasons. 

So below are our two boys, spending a sunny afternoon in their regular fashion: riding bikes together on the driveway, having a great time at it!

So Grown-Up!

At nearly 18 months old, Abby has become quite the little fashionista.  She loves helping to pick out pretty skirts and dresses to wear and especially enjoys searching through her hair "pretties" for something to put into her locks.  She just adores my shoes and handbags and we will frequently catch her trudging across the room in mismatched shoes from my closet.  She is such a girly girl, as any daughter in a houseful of men and boys should be :).

Lately Abby has been getting into playing dress up, espcially when some of the "older" girls from church come over to play with her.  She has a full fan club of 5-9 year old girls :).  Here, Abby is playing dress up with her eight year old friend, Regan.  This lovely ensemble, however, is all Abby's own doing; she watched Regan get dressed up and then once everything was back on the floor, Abby picked it up and started to put it all on at once.  Doesn't she look lovely, purple fur wrap, mardi gras beads,  floral flapper hat and all?

IVNS Goes Bowling

Benjamin's preschool class took their second fieldtrip this spring to Earl Bowl Lanes for a morning of bowling.  Since bowling is one of my true loves in life and something I really, truly excel at....I begged and pleaded for Andrew to take the day off and go on the fieldtrip with our guy :).  Once he found out that some of the other dads were also going, he was looking forward to the outing even more and was excited to have some father-son time with Benjamin.

This was Benjamin's first time bowling and he really enjoyed it. They had the bumpers set up on the gutters so it was a great and encouraging first experience for him.  Andrew was looking into options for joining the bowling league with Ben by the end of the day, reliving his youth :).

Here's Ben in action...wow, these balls are a lot heavier than our Little Tikes one at home!

The final scoreboard for Andrew and Ben's lane.  Obviously, they are the bottom two names.  Of course Andrew was the winner and Benjamin bowled a decent 68 for his first ever time at the sport.  Hey, that's better than I probably would have done if I had come instead :).