Easter Time

Making the dye for Easter eggs.



Getting ready to start dying the eggs. Some little boy didn't participate.



D set out all of her Easter animals for the Easter Bunny to see when he came. Apparantly the Barbie head qualified because "her ponies are long and look like bunny ears."



Ready for the Easter egg hunt at church.



Decorating their bags.



Posing with the giant eggs.



Enjoying the fruits of their labor after the egg hunt.



Looking at what the Easter Bunny brought.





The Easter Bunny even hid the eggs the kids colored outside (thankfully there's no more snow on the playset!)





All the cousins outside after Easter brunch.



The usual Easter family picture outside.

Winter Springland

Enjoying the nice weather before...well, you'll see in a couple of pictures.



Why isn't it obvious to a three year old which way to put your pants on?



This is what we woke up to Wednesday morning...ugh! When will the madness end?



Wednesday morning we went to the Bell Museum on the U of M campus with friends. They have large dioramas with stuffed animals. The kids just loved it!



D got to put her head up into this contained garden world.



The Touch and See Room was a big hit. D loved touching all the animals. She was a little tentative about the bear.





M was more into the books than the animals.



He didn't even want to touch the snake! D did, though. (That's not M in the picture).



Giant goose egg. How do they appear so instantaneously? Mr. Smooth Walker ran into a door. Poor guy!

Spring Has Sprung!

The kids spent the weekend at my parents house and Steve and I had a nice weekend to ourselves--thanks Mom and Dad! When we came to pick them up on Sunday, they got to search Grandma and Papa's house for Easter baskets.



The baskets were filled with lots of fun things and with the weather FINALLY turning nice here, we got to go outside and enjoy their new toys. Here they are blowing bubbles.



M tried to catch his bubbles.



It was windy enough out that you just had to wave the wand and bubbles made themselves. D enjoyed hers for quite a while.



This is where the rest of M's bubbles ended up. I figured they'd end up spilled sooner or later.



Next we did the bean bag toss game. M did amazingly well at this. Maybe there is a future for him in sports!



We decided with all the strong winds we've had the past couple of days, we thought it would be a good time to try out the kites. The kids had a blast with them and were begging to fly them all day. They wore themselves out running in the field to keep the kites up high.







We made a snack out of some of the treats the kids got. We made cactus pudding since we are studying the desert. We made the pudding green, then crumbled "desert sand" (peanut butter cookie crumbs) on top. Yum!

Squeak

We got free tickets to see Born to be Wild at the Imax on Saturday. The kids loved it and it was just the right length-45 minutes. D tried to reach out and touch the animals with her 3D glasses on.



D herself transformed into a mouse for her dance pictures on Monday. These costumes are so cute! She is doing her "paw pose", which is part of their dance routine as they scamper about on stage.

Jackson Street Roundhouse

Getting work done on the bedroom in the basement of the cabin.











The kids went to a birthday party for friends at the Tamarack Nature Center this past weekend.



Here they are with their seeking scopes, looking for the treasure box.



They found the treasure box! What's inside? Stickers and tattoos.



Everyone got to carry back some of the trail markers and animals we saw along the way.



M got a slinky last weekend from my mom and dad. I guess three years old is too young for him to play with it "properly". Don't get me wrong, he and his sister had a blast playing with it. They were very creative and stretched it in ways I didn't know were possible. The first time it got tangled, he wanted me to fix it. It was work to get it back, but fixable. This, clearly, is a hopeless cause. He told me he wants another one for his birthday and that he won't "break" it again. Hopefully the next one will last longer than two days!



We visited the Jackson Street Roundhouse on Wednesday with some friends. The kids had a great time going inside the train cars, playing with the train tables, coloring train pictures, blowing train whistles, climbing up on trains, walking on train tracks...lots to see and do there. We'll have to go back on a Saturday when they give little train rides on the roundhouse.

National Eagle Center

We went to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha on Saturday with our neighbors. The kids had fun seeing the eagles up close and in person and watching them on Lake Pepin through binoculars.

That is Harriet in the background. She was the "model" for the eagles on the Minnesota veteran's license plates.







We got to learn more about Harriet during the classtime.



Four silly eagles. Afterwards we went to Slippery's for dinner, which is mentioned in the movies Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.



We went to a bowling and pizza party for one of D's friends on Sunday. The kids loved bowling and ramps + bumpers make for good scores. M didn't want to use the ramp the last few frames and he actually got a spare all on his own without his ball even touching the bumpers.

Ladybug, Ladybug

D loves the new pillow pet she got for her birthday. She throws her regular pillow off of her bed every night and uses the ladybug instead. The kids were watching a movie here and M actually fell asleep. I was just about to pick him up and put him to bed, when D said she wanted a snack and he instantly woke up.



Which one is the pillow pet?