Easter

We have been celebrating Easter all week in our house. On Tuesday I surprised Kai by picking him up early from preschool to take him to an Easter party at Pump it Up--only his favorite place in the whole world. The event included an Easter egg hunt, a craft, a visit from the Big Bunny himself, and plenty of jumping.

A couple of days later there was a party at Kai's preschool. It started off with an egg hunt in the courtyard. As usual, the parents followed the children around like the paparazzi taking pictures of their kids.

Back in the classroom the kids enjoyed snacks while the parents stood silently around the perimeter of the room taking pictures.

As Ron Burgundy would say, "When in Rome..."

Once snack time was over, the parents spoke to their children in hushed tones until it was time to leave. All of the preschools' parties have followed this format more or less. They're pretty lame.

In past years I've avoided dying eggs with Kai--it's messy, time consuming, and what do you do with all those hard-boiled eggs anyway? But this year I decided to give it a go. Kai was so excited and kept telling me, "This is so fun, Mommy!" "Thank you for letting me do this, Mommy!" "I love this, Mommy!"

 

It made me feel a little guilty that I didn't indulge him in past years. Especially since egg dying didn't turn out to be as messy as I had feared. The key is to dress appropriately.

We kicked off the Easter weekend by attending an Easter potluck party at a friends' house. Kai was all business until he found his 10 allotted eggs. The stinker wouldn't stop to pose for a single picture so I chased him around taking uninspired pictures of his back.

But once he was finished it was a different story

Saturday night we sent Kai to bed a little early with  reminders that he needed to be asleep if he wanted the Easter bunny to come. He was eager to comply, but materialized in our room at 1:30 AM asking if the Easter Bunny had come yet. When I told him that he needed to go back to bed or the Easter Bunny would not be coming at all, he responded, "But Mommy, my tummy hurts from sleeping for too long." 

Nice try!

At 7 the next morning, Ari started crying, but I didn't hear a peep from Kai's room, so I went and got Ari and brought him into our room where I figured we would wait until Kai woke up. At 7:15 Kai bounded happily into our room announcing, "The Easter Bunny came.... I found all my toys!" 

The little stinker had pulled some kind of ninja maneuver--managing to sneak out into the playroom and find his Easter stash and half the eggs without making a sound. So much for capturing the magic on camera. Oh well. 

Kai was impressed that the Easter Bunny was up to speed on his two great loves:

The stuffed Hump Back Whale that he named Humphrey was probably the biggest hit of the day

But Yo and I were most excited about this Strider balance bike

Ari is our little percussionist these days--banging on anything within reach. So his basket contained a drum. He also got some more dinosaurs, a cute cloth book, little classical music toy, and a walker. Which I hope will help him figure out what those legs are for.

Our whole family came down with a cold this past week. Yo was in the thick of it Saturday morning. It hit me and Ari by Saturday night. The two of us were still feeling under the weather this morning so we sent Yo and Kai off to church in their Easter digs without us. 

After church, Kai and I rolled over to the local park to test out his new bike. Kai hasn't quite figured out how to get the momentum necessary to balance on it yet. It would be easier if there weren't so many dandelions distracting you along the way...

We ended our day over dinner with friends. As usual the food was delicious, but the company was even better. The only picture we snapped was this one:

I would be remiss to share this Easter post, without spending a moment to reflect on the life and the love of the Savior. It truly is unfathomable that the son of God, Jesus the Christ, would humble himself and suffer as he did--paying the price for my sins in the garden and on the cross--out of love for someone as imperfect as I.

And when I think that God his son not sparing,
Sent him to die - I scarce can take it in,
That on the cross my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Happy Easter!!!

Ari's growing repertoire

"Does he have any tricks?" is a question mothers are asked about their babies more often than you'd think. Unless you count growing teeth and being fat as "tricks" then Ari hasn't done much that I could qualify as a trick.... until recently.

Ari is showing signs that he understands some of what we are saying. This is one of my favorite stages. I still remember the first time that I realized Kai could understand me. He was about 6 months old when I said "Do you want to play this little piggy, Kai?" and he held up his foot in response. I was totally amazed and delighted.

With Ari I play a game where I steal his binky after saying, "Gimme that binky," or "I'm gonna get that binky!" We were playing this game a few weeks ago when I said "Gimme that binky!" and then Ari took his binky out of his mouth and promptly stuck it in mine. It's now a favorite game in our house.

Ari also gives famously slobbery kisses on demand. And his latest trick is featured below:

I know what you're thinking... cute AND smart. Or was that just me? ;)

Schoonermaker Beach

While the rest of the country has been enduring one long and arduous winter, we have been enjoying glorious weather here in the Bay. Last week temperatures hit the low 80s and with sunshine to spare so I did the responsible thing and hit the beach. Duh.

Instead of heading to Santa Cruz as usual, I decided to do a little research and came across a blog post by a Bay Area dad that rated the top 5, kid friendly beaches in the Bay. So we decided to check out one of them, Schoonermaker Beach in Sausalito, with our friends the Lunnys.

You know it's a nice day in the Bay when it's this sunny going over the Golden Gate

The beach was PERFECT for little kids. It was literally located in a marina so the water was very calm and there were lots of cool boats for the boys to look at.

Without waves and undercurrents to worry about, we felt comfortable letting the boys splash and play in the water without us hovering over them.

The beach itself was the perfect scale. There was plenty of room to spread out our blankets and for the kids to play in the sand, but we could see the entire beach (which was sandwiched between two boat docks) from where we were sitting.

So the kids were contained and the mommies were totally relaxed and able to focus our attention on our little ones.

Other pluses of this place: The sand was nice and powdery, the parking free, and the bathrooms and trash cans nearby.

You may have noticed that Kai's swim trunks are on backward in all of these picture above. He's really into dressing himself these days and if he puts something on the wrong way he will insist that he prefers it that way. It's not a battle that I think is worth fighting. Maybe he'll start a new trend?

The 3 hours that we spent at the beach flew by. Kai didn't sit down for one moment the entire time that we were there. 

I think we all could have been happy staying another hour or two, but we wanted to beat the commuter traffic on our trek home so we left with the promise that we would return again... and soon.

Rancho San Antonio

We continue to hit some of the Bay Area's hotspots. This week we checked out Rancho San Antonio. Once again, Kai wanted to get out of the stroller and do some walking.

After all, there were streams to jump over

 Bridges to cross

And tree stumps to climb

But the highlight for Kai was checking out the wildlife. We saw several deer:

 

And a lot of wild turkeys

I got a little too close to this one and he skunked me

Kai could have spent all day chasing those big birds (Kai LOVES chasing any ol' bird, but the bigger the better), but Yo was afraid the resident hippie types would get mad so he put the kabosh on our Kai's fun:

So instead of harassing the wild animals, we headed over to the farm to make friends with some domesticated animals instead.

I couldn't get over how cute the baby lambs were

Yo couldn't get over how pregnant this goat was

Kai finally found an animal that he was allowed to touch

He could have stayed there all day. But the cat had other plans. So we moved along. Slowly.

I think going at a three-year-old's pace was a bit of an adjustment for Yo. He did a lot of hurry-up-and-wait(ing).

 But it did give him time to write some work emails.

I didn't mind walking at a snail's pace. It gave me more time to snap some pictures.

And even managed to get out from behind the lens to get a couple of pictures of me with the boys

 

We got back to the car with time to take just one more shot