Swingin' into Spring

You wouldn't know it from the weather recently, but rumor has it that Spring is in full swing. And I guess the rumors must be true because Easter has come and gone and so have the Andersens. The last few weeks have been action packed and lots of fun. More pictures are to come soon, but I at least wanted to post some pictures from our Easter celebration on Sunday.

Last year Kai was too young to participate in Easter in any sort of meaningful way, so other going to church we didn't end up celebrating at all. This year we made up for it by pulling out all of the stops. Here are a few pictures from Kai's first real Easter.

 Kai and Pappa sporting their Sunday best for church.

Courtesy of Yo who put Kai down for a nap in flannel pajamas with a space heater on, Kai took a marathon nap to gear up for the big event. (He was actually semi-comatose. I had to shake him into consciousness. Luckily there seem to be no permanent side effects just lingering rosy cheeks and state of groginess. What doesn't kill him makes him stronger, right?)

 

Despite Kai's nap hangover, he started to get into the little Easter egg hunt that we set up for him in the backyard when he discovered this truck book. 

 

It took a little coaxing to get Kai to hunt for actual eggs. That is until he discovered what was inside the eggs. Candy? Hardly. Binkies!

 

Kai was over the moon. He quickly went running from egg to egg saying "Binky! Binky!" 

After the binky discovery he was surprisingly disappointed when he came across the eggs hiding toy cars. Who would have thought?

Luckily the grand finale of the hunt lived up to its grand title. With the help of Yo and Stein (Yo's dad) the Easter Bunny had this beauty waiting for Kai in the front yard on Easter morning. 

 

Kai couldn't wait to test it out, and Pappa was happy to comply. 

 The picture on the right makes me want to squeal with joy. Since we only hid 5 eggs and skipped the tradition of Easter candy altogether, we threw a couple of surprises into the Easter hunt that were a big hit. Other than the truck book that has already become Kai's new favorite, we got Kai some bath toys, sand toys, a chunky police car and a bubble blower that looks like a shark and is easy enough for Kai to use. In case you didn't know...

Kai likes bubbles!

After the egg hunt, Yo and his parents took Kai to an Easter party at Yo's work place complete with a petting zoo. While they were gone, I put the final touches on our Easter dinner. After they got back the Jacobs joined us for an Easter feast. I seriously ate myself sick..... seriously. 

All-in-all it was a perfect day. We felt so blessed to get to share the weekend with Yo's parents who were in town visiting from Norway. I will be posting more pictures and details of their visit soon so stay tuned.

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day...

Today I had a crappy day pretty much through and through. But at the end of the day I got to go pick-up my kid from daycare. When he saw that I looked sad he gave me a big hug, patted me on the back and said Mama over and over again. Life is good.

Apologetically yours, Carly

Ok, I am fully aware that I might be judged for what I'm about to share. I did something a little tasteless (ghetto?) yesterday.

As a family we spent the whole day down in Gilroy. We went to the outlets in the morning and then took Kai to Gilroy Gardens in the afternoon. (Loved it! Post to follow). The one thing that I knew I wanted to get at the outlets was an Easter outfit for Kai. But we ended up making a stop in the Banana Republic Outlet before heading over to the baby clothing stores.

One thing led to the next, and suddenly I'm holding a back-breaking load of clothes and heading toward the dressing room. I couldn't help myself. There were sooooo many cute clothes to try on and the prices were ridiculously cheap. I would have been in shopping heaven, but while I was trying on cute, cheap clothes, Yo was stuck with entertaining Kai. I felt a tinge of guilt as I overheard Kai's occasional outbursts, but refused to come out of the dressing room until I made my way through the entire pile of clothes.

So when we finally headed to the baby clothing stores and Yo asked if he could go check out Polo, I felt it was only fair to volunteer to keep Kai with me while I looked for Kai's Easter outfit.

I immediately regretted my decision. We were in the first store for less than 30 seconds when Kai started screaming to be let down, but the second I put him on the ground he bolted for the door. And when I tried picking him back up again, he totally freaked out. In a store full of screaming babies, I still got a few looks.

By the time we made it to the 3rd store, after leaving the first two empty-handed, I was at my wit's end. So I did what any mom would do and just started grabbing anything in Kai's size that was remotely cute. By the time I got to the register, I would have paid an arm and a leg just to get out of that store. As it turns out, I did pay an arm and a leg. That's what you get for not looking at price tags.

I reassured Yo that I did not plan on keeping all of the clothes that I snagged. So once we got home, I sorted through the clothes and put together one very cute, Eastery outfit.

I also put together one ridiculously cute, but laughably impractical, alternate outfit. With a little regret, I promised myself that I would return it to the store this Wednesday on my day off, but also convinced myself that there was no harm in having Kai model the outfit. And, if he were going to model the outfit, there was no harm in taking a few pictures of him doing so.

Judge away! We all know that the only reason we buy our kids cute, but impractical clothes, is so that we can capture the outfits in a picture. The picture is where we get the return on our investment, right? After all, our kids don't really wear clothes like that in every day life because they just get ruined. So yes, I totally cheated the system.

Do I feel guilty? Slightly. Was it worth it? Judge for yourselves.

And if the cuteness of these pictures isn't enough to justify my misdeed, just look at how happy it made Kai to wear such nice clothes.

Just kidding... this is actually how most of the "photo shoot" went:

Andersen Car Wash, at your service!

Without fail every weekend Yo has a "To Do" list that I have grown to loathe. First of all, while I almost always end up being productive on the weekends, I hate having the pressure to be productive hanging over me every Saturday morning before my feet have even hit the floor. Second of all, we tend to have different priorities. I admit that I kind of resent the fact that washing the cars seems to be at the top of Yo's list every weekend.

Yesterday Yo referred to the upkeep of his cars as his hobby. I was pretty quick to chime in that it was more of an obsession and now that he has 4 cars and a motorcycle to keep up with (*blush*), it's a pretty time consuming endeavor.

The upside of Yo's obsession is that I always have a well-maintained and squeaky clean car to drive around. Since Yo is too old to start collecting baseball cards, I guess should start focusing more on the positive side of his hobby because, let's face it, it's probably here to stay.

As fate would have it, Kai shares Yo's affinity for cars, so I have something else to be grateful for, Yo and Kai have something that they can share together. Yesterday, Kai got to help Yo wash the cars for the first time. At first Kai wasn't very keen on getting his hands dirty. But he wasn't shy about divvying out the feedback:

"You need a little more soap."

"Hey Pappa, you missed a spot."

"See, right here!"

But it didn't take long before Kai decided that he wanted in on the fun:

And that, of course, led to this:

Which led to this expression:

 

 Ewww!

So it should be no surprise that the next thing he did was this:

"Seriously Mom, it's gross. You should try some."

After he figured out that the soap water was not fit for human consumption, Kai finally decided to put it to good use.

Honestly, our driveway has never looked so clean. Thanks, Kai!