Some Easter Festivities

We had some of our Easter festivities a little early this year. There were a few reasons for this, one being that Grandma had to work Easter weekend and we all decided that doing our egg hunt the week before would be better for everyone.

We dyed some eggs to hide in the hunt. We dyed lots of eggs. Somehow we ended up with a bazillion of those little egg coloring tablets. We had about 15 different containers of colors and then ended up just dumping a bunch of the tablets together to see what color we could make. The kids called it "baby barf green". It took about 2 seconds for an egg dunked in that color to be done. Those little tablets are powerful! Especially when you combine 13 of them in one bowl!
These pictures are not the greatest, but at least I have proof that a fun family activity happened!



The next day we went to Grandmas' house for the Egg Hunt!!!!
We also filled some plastic eggs with candy and brought half of our hard-boiled eggs. So did everyone else. There were tons of eggs to hide and find!
Here are some of the children with their precious treasures.
Adrienne found the GOLDEN EGG!!
Isaac was enjoying his egg tremendously.
Ryanne found a giant blue egg stuffed with candy.
Savannah was happy with her eggs too.
Tyler liked finding eggs, but he was more excited about the skink that he caught, which wound up being put in a plastic egg.

Jonah was nowhere to be found during this part of the egg hunt because he was too busy searching for eggs. He didn't bother with the hard-boiled ones. He only picked up the ones that were filled with candy.
Here are all the cousin participants.
Joined by some of the adult egg hiders and happy watchers.

We had a really fun time.

Baseball

Is it Matt?
No, just a smaller version that looks just like him.
Jonah & Ryanne are playing baseball this year. Jonah hasn't played since he was 4 and decided this was a great year to give it a try again.

Most of the kids on Jonah's team having been playing since before they were 4, so Jonah had some catching up to do. His season has been going on for a few weeks and he has really improved. He has a great coach, who is a good teacher and Matt has taken some time to help him practice batting and catching.

In his age group, the boys pitch to each other and the games are not always super exciting. (Don't get mad at me for saying that- it's just the truth!), but this past weekend, he really had an exciting game.
His team really pulled together and played well and I was just amazed at how much some of the players have improved in just a few weeks. It was a really fun game to watch.
Here are the girls with their big brother after his game.

I haven't remembered to take the camera to one of Ryanne's games yet, but I will make sure to get a couple of her. She looks really cute in her uniform and she is enjoying learning the basics of baseball with some new friends.

Some people just do things their own way

The other night I walked into the bathroom to see if Savannah was brushing her teeth.
She was. In her very own, creative, acrobatic way.


If you try this, make sure that your feet get in on the action too.

Uncle Jacob's Visit

My younger brother Jacob decided to spend half of his spring break visiting us this year. He spent the first half at our sister's house in DC and then he came down to Georgia.

We picked him up from the airport and headed straight to the church for the Pinewood Derby. I forgot to take my camera, but you can see pictures on the Cub Scout blog over here . I think Jonah enjoyed himself.

I always enjoy having some adult company during the day. We went and ate lunch with Ryanne at school and then got to work making some yummy things in the kitchen. Jacob had a couple of requests, which made me happy because I love to cook and bake for people. After school we went to a park where Ry had baseball practice later that afternoon and we played and explored.
I don't think it is possible to get a normal face from Jonah when I am taking a picture. This is what he did when I asked him to let me take a picture of him.

We took a nice walk and enjoyed nature, water and the beautiful sunshine.

I realized a little too late that Savannah had somehow gotten her hands on a 2T shirt. She had a little bit of a belly showing problem-o.


The girls were so pleased with themselves upon finding this green slime in the water. How exciting!!!

It was a great afternoon.
The next day Jacob was the "Mystery Reader" for Jonah's class at school and then he joined Jonah for lunch. We had some good friends, Whitney and Richard come up from Milledgeville, so we went and got ice cream and then went to a different park.
Later that night the adults watched a movie and the kids were all in Jonah's room. Matt told them they had to be asleep by 10 and we all thought they would still be up running around like crazy people, but sure enough, they were all spread out on the floor, asleep, with the light on when 10:00 rolled around.

Jacob was here on Saturday when it rained like crazy, so baseball games were cancelled and we were able to hang out at home. We had a really bad thunderstorm with so much lightning that I got a little scared. The next morning I had to take Jacob back to the airport.

We had so much fun. Jacob played with the kids outside, jumped on the trampoline with them, made them laugh and just was a great friend to all of us. We really enjoyed his visit.
Thank you so much for spending your Spring Break with us Jake- We love you!!

Static Electricity

Have you jumped on a trampoline recently? Do you remember how much fun it can be?

I jumped on ours the other day with the kids. I love how it makes everyone giggle.
I was just looking through some pictures and found these from January when Ryanne brought home her Kindergarten class' teddy bear. We were supposed to just have him for the weekend, but then we got snowed in for a week, so we had Beary for 10 whole days.

I am going to have to post more of the pics and remember all the fun times we had with Beary, but for now, this will have to do.

The Holocaust Memorial

There is one other place that we visited in Miami, but I felt like it needed it's own post because it isn't as happy and sunshine-y as the rest of the trip. This is the Holocaust Memorial that is located by the Miami Botanical Gardens and the Convention Center. If you are interested in reading how and why this Memorial came about and to see better pictures, please click Here- Holocaust Memorial. -especially the About and The Creation sections. That site is really quite interesting- it shows some of the sculptures up close and explains the design and everything. Really good.

I saw some signs for it and was curious, so the day we had rented a scooter, we went to check it out.

It is hard to describe exactly how the memorial works, but there are a series of circle-like tunnels that lead you from place to place. It starts with pictures and a history of the Holocaust down one of the circle-hallway-tunnels. Maps with numbers of how many Jews were killed from different countries, photos of the prisoners, timelines, and so forth. By this point I was already in tears. On the ceiling of one of the circle-tunnel things it had the names of all the prisoner camps. I recognized a few of the names, but was surprised that there were so many. That tunnel led us to the tall hand structure that is reaching toward the sky. The first picture shows the sculpture of a little child reaching out to you in agony, right as you enter this part of the memorial. Very haunting.
All the way up the arm, there are hoards of emaciated people, climbing over each other, sick looking, lifting babies and children, all of them looking for any way out. Screaming for help. Trying to escape the despair. It was heart wrenching.
The walls that encircle these figures are filled with thousands, millions, so many names of the victims of the Holocaust. It has the same effect as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC. It makes you realize as you place your fingers across the names, that every single one of those victims was a single person. A member of a family. A member of a community. Someone who was important to other people. An innocent life taken simply because they were a Jew.

I can't comprehend how something like the Holocaust happened. It seems so impossible and so ridiculous. Although I know that innocent people all over the world are still brutally killed and mistreated because of their religion, race, ethnicity, etc. It just makes my heart hurt.
Here is a different angle. There was a pool surrounding the memorial.
There were also a few quotes by Anne Frank on the walls of part of the memorial.

This is the one that was on the wall right before the exit- "Ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered."


That is just a partial quote from Anne Frank's diary- here is the full quote-
"That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Celebrating our 10th Anniversary in Miami

On March 3rd, we celebrated our 10th anniversary. Every year we go away for at least one night, taking turns planning the getaway, and this year it was my turn to plan.
Since it was our 10th anniversary, I decided to check flights and see if I could get a good deal to somewhere that was kinda close, but not within reasonable driving distance for a relaxing weekend. I was on the lookout for quite a few weeks and Miami won!

I was excited to go to the beach and enjoy some warm weather.

The water was absolutely gorgeous. The most beautiful blue color.
We spent lots of time walking up and down the beach. Most of the time it was pretty crowded, except nighttime, when the masses of people left to go eat/drink/party somewhere else.

Swimming in the ocean was so much fun. The water was chilly, but it was so relaxing to be able to jump in the waves and have fun with Matt without worrying about the kids. It was the first time in a while that I could remember not really worrying while being on the beach, since I didn't have to keep my 2 eyes on 3 kids, which is slightly impossible.
We saw lots of these blue-ish/purple-y guys washed up on the beach. My web research tells me that they are Portuguese man of war-s. Very interesting to look at, but I wouldn't want to see one in any other situation than washed up on the beach, if you know what I mean.
One of the days we went out on a boat with a large group of other people. We were supposed to go parasailing, but it was too windy to do that safely. We were able to jet ski, swim to a little island type thing and explore and enjoy the sailboat.
We ate yummy food. This was from a little cafe that we walked to one day for lunch. Very good.
One day we rented a scooter and we drove up to miami beach and explored. It was really fun. Especially going over these huge bridges with tons of cars, going at a very slow pace (compared to the cars).

It was so nice to be able to spend some quality time together. I also really enjoyed sleeping in. Its so important to be able to reconnect with Matt and have great conversations. I love that we still laugh together and are able to enjoy spending day after day together.


I am so grateful to my in-laws for keeping the kids and not having to worry about them at all the entire time we were gone.

I wonder where the next 10 years will take us!