Tuesday, April 14, 2015

UT Trip and Easter

A couple of weeks ago, the kids and I went out to UT for the funeral of my Unlce Joe. Of course I never thought to pull out my camera to get a shot of me and my cousins or aunts and uncles I rarely see. I only took pictures of the kids being dorks.

Now that's some "parenting" right there

We spent a lovely afternoon at my Aunt Marian's before the viewing, where the kids got to decompress a bit after the travel the night before.


Then, the next day, after the funeral, we let them loose at a mall. Seriously, love that Lego store.



None of the other 3-year-olds Natalie hangs out with seem to get her sense of humor quite as much as cousin Aaron. Maybe it's a family thing.


And, here is Angela walking around at a park eating a chicken leg wearing overalls. Now that's a country baby.

Travel back was on the redeye. Poor kids! One thing I didn't know about Natalie- when she's out, she's out. She remained unconscious throughout check in, security and boarding, even though she was picked up and put down various times and there way noise and all kindsa crazy going on around us. I had her sprawled out on her back on the table at the TSA checkpoint while arranging out stuff in bins and her eyelids didn't even flutter. Here she is asleep while hanging off a chair while checking in...


It's finally spring, that gorgeous season that lasts about 2 weeks here where it's warm and dry enough to play out back, but the pollen and mosquitoes haven't descended yet.



We dyed eggs for Easter and Natalie thought it was pretty magical


The Easter Bunny brought her a soccer ball "Just like Kimber" and hid her eggs all over the back yard!



 That Easter Bunny really made her work for them!



 And, everyone started getting a little tired once General Conference started, in true at-home-conference-watching style



Finally, this awesome picture that Natalie made (unprompted!) of the Easter story. From left to right we have...
1.The cross. Like a dotted letter T/I
2. 3 squiggly circles that Natalie calls "people walking on the sidewalk, not on the road" (not certain what part of the story this represents, or if it's an unrelated important principle just being interjected there)
3. The circle with a horizontal line is "the tomb"
4. "Jesus resurrected". As you can see, he is smiling.

HA! You thought I forgot, did't you?!

Here are some pictures from Christmas time. This was our first time using our new zoo membership with our friends Alex and Amelia visiting.








Christmas morning lasted well into the afternoon, with the kids wanting to enjoy every toy and stocking item thoroughly before moving on to the next.


Breakfast of champions: Ham & eggs & nerds

Santa brought Natalie the one thing she asked for- a plane!


And Sammy helped Angela open a lot of her presents. Grandpa, if nobody else, will be interested to see that Natalie made Daddy put together her scooter right away to take for a ride outside.















The day after Christmas we went on a last-minute-planned jaunt up to Wilmington for the weekend because I couldn't be the only one of my siblings not there. I couldn't risk my rank on the favorite child scale!



Natalie got some good cousin time in.


And, of course, some solid Grandpa time, as well. 



We did the Carolina Beach Park lights, as it just wouldn't be a holiday Wilmington trip without it.












It provided a rare opportunity to get all these people in front of the same camera.








And our holiday break ended with the celebration of Natalie's 3rd birthday.  For breakfast, the birthday princess got to choose her own cereal at the store. She wanted chocolate and went for the one with the tiger on it. We went to the mall with her best friend and rode the merry-go-round and went on the little train that rides drives around the halls. Then she got to pick lunch at the food court- all she wanted was lemonade, so she got a chick-fil-e kids meal- and finish it off with ice cream. Also, stopped and played at the Lego store.




She actually ended up getting scared and we sat on the bench of the carousel, but still fun!


And, Angela was cute. As usual.