Happiness

Don't Be Jealous

What can I say?  This child loves to clean! 

2012 White House Easter Egg Roll

We had the privilege of attending the White House Easter Egg Roll this year. The tickets are given out by lottery system, so we were lucky to win them.  It took place on the day after Easter.  And, as more luck would have it, Calder's school was closed for the day! 

First metro ride!  She loved it.

Welcome banner

We knew there would be a lot of people there...but we weren't quite prepared for this mayhem.   We shared our experience with 6,995 others.  It was very chaotic, and it took us a while to get our bearings. 

Calder found many "friends" that he was happy to have his picture taken with.

We eventually decided that we had to split up, because there were long lines for every activity and we were getting nowhere fast with our crew of 5. (Lesson learned: we shouldn't have brought Alyse along. She was not happy being restrained in the stroller or sling the whole time.)  In the end, the kids only got to do one activity each, which was really disappointing.  If we ever do this again, we'll know to get there WAY earlier and to develop a plan of attack as soon as we walk in.

Calder chose to do the obstacle course, where he met one of our favorite former Steelers player, Antwaan Randle El!

Awesome photo op!

While waiting in line for the obstacle course, we ran into Calder's best buddy from school!  Two cheesy grins.  They must be five.

While Calder, Alyse and I were at the obstacle course, Dave and Tessa waited in line at the egg roll.  We got over there just as they reached the front of the line, so I was able to snap a few pictures. 

Despite practicing the night before, she decided against actually rolling the egg.  Instead, she picked it up and carried it...then wanted to walk off with the wooden spoon!  A lady had to chase her down to retrieve it. :)

The highlight (for the adults) was the appearance of the First Family.  We had heard beforehand that they only appear at one of the time slots.  While we were waiting in line, we heard rumors that they were going to be at our time slot!

As cool as it was that they were there, I think it added to the craziness.  We couldn't get close to the story stage, cooking stage or any of the other activities they did because of a ridiculous amount of media, and of course all of the other thousands of people who were trying to catch a close look! 

I did, however, get this close to Michelle.  She was being escorted from the cooking stage in the same area where we were waiting to exit.  If I had waited about a 1/2 a second, I could have had a picture of her looking directly at me!  And, if I hadn't been fumbling with my camera, I could have shaken her hand.  Doh!

All in all, I'm glad we went.  It really was a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience...particularly because the Obama family made an appearance during our time slot.  But, we won't be entering the lottery to go again anytime soon. It was super stressful for us to keep track of the kids in that huge crowd.  And we had three extremely tired, hungry and whiny kids by the end.  Maybe we'll try again when they are much older!

Easter Sunday

We had a laid-back Easter Sunday this year. The kids woke up and found their baskets, devoured a ton of sugar, hunted for eggs around the house, and devoured more sugar before church. We hung out at home for the rest of the day and the kids played with their neighborhood friends. We missed being with family for the holiday, but it was a nice, relaxing day! After church, we attempted some pictures -- Mommy even got in on these for a change!

Easter Egg Hunt

I learned my lesson last year about those big, free, public Easter Egg Hunts.  So, this year we splurged on an event at a historic home in Old Town, The Lee-Fendall House.  It.was.awesome.  It was laid back, relaxed and not even close to crowded.  They had snacks, crafts and yard games for the kids.  It was a gorgeous morning.  And best of all, there were plenty of eggs for all of the children.
 

Tessa made Dave open each egg as soon as she picked it up.  She was pretty disappointed to find that the eggs were filled with little toys instead of candy...but the cookies at the snack table made up for it! 

 

The other wonderful thing about this event?  We had full access to the Easter Bunny for the entire time!  This was especially great since Tessa was pretty skittish about him at first, but after a little bit of time, she eventually came around.  Calder was, of course, a fan from the second we walked in!
 

The Lee-Fendall House has a gorgeous lawn, which provided a great place to get some good shots of the kids. :)

Since I was pretty sure Calder would be crawling around on the ground, I had him wear jeans.  They were his good jeans though (i.e. the ones with only one hole in the knee).  I was right about him crawling around on the ground, and by the time we left he had two matching holes in his knees. Such is life with a 5 year old boy!

We will definitely return here for future Easter egg hunts!

Dying Eggs

This year, I decided to try the Kool-Aid method of dying Easter eggs that I saw all over Pinterest.  All of the pictures showed beautifully dyed eggs in a rainbow of colors, so I was very excited about trying it, and the kids were also super excited that they were allowed to "taste-test" the colors.  Keep in mind, there was no sugar in the water...just the Kool-Aid powder, so it tasted nasty - totally sour and bitter.  But, my two bunnies loved it and seriously would have gulped down every cup if I would have let them! 

Spectator Bunny:

By the end, they had pretty much mixed together every color.

So about that beautiful rainbow of colored eggs?  Well, let's just say that ours didn't turn out quite like the ones in the pictures...  Ours were orange, blue and grey.  But the fun factor was still a 10!

Favorite Photo from March

Tessa's Spring Song

Tessa loves to sing and frequently sings along to songs in the car.  But she surprised me the other day by singing a new song that she had learned at school.




From what I can decipher, the words are something like this:

Come on down March,
We'll welcome Spring
The tree ....?
The birds will sing
The kite will soar high on a string
And rainbows paint the sky!

Peek-a-boo and Bye-Bye