5 Years!

5 years ago yesterday I gave birth to what nurses and friends said was one of the most beautiful babies they had ever seen.  She might be 5 years old, but she is still my beautiful baby!  Happy Birthday my sweet, sweet Lily!

Happy Easter!

This year at Easter we really tried to focus more on the true meaning of the holiday and we talked with the kids about Christ quite bit.  We did the Resurrection Eggs with our children's church class (we were the teachers for Easter morning) and the kids and I also made this little Resurrection Garden.  The kids had a lot of fun making it with me and then watching it grow.  On Good Friday we placed a play dough Jesus in the tomb and on Easter Sunday we celebrated that the stone was rolled away, that Jesus had been resurrected, and that our God is alive!

And we did all of the other Easter things too!  Eli was the first to find his basket this year (well Lily actually found his basket...and then let him find it).

And almost as soon as Lily found her basket the poor little bunny lost his ears!:)

And Eli quickly followed suit with his bunny ears!

And while is was sort of a chilly, dreary day outside we still managed to get in our Easter egg hunt outside before church (and before the rain came).

Eli really had to work for this one!

Lily's basket was overflowing!

And then the kids got to go inside and discover all of the candy in their eggs.  Eli was so excited to do this that he didn't even bother to take off  his boots!

Eli had a little bit of a cold (as you can tell from his running nose)- but that didn't stop him from enjoying the goodies!

And I managed to get a few pictures of my babies all dressed up and ready for church!

Yes, these were the faces I got when I asked Eli to smile for me!:)

And one of the funniest parts of the day was this squishy toy crocodile.  Eli is a bit obsessed with crocodiles...he LOVES them!  Every time we go by a body of water he thinks that there are crocodiles in it and he tells you how many he sees and then says, "snap, snap."  It's really quite adorable.  So, I got this squishy crocodile to go in his Easter basket.  I knew that he would either love it or being afraid of it.  Let's just say it was the later.  Oh my, he was fascinated with it, he wanted to watch us play with it, he refused to just leave it alone, but he didn't want to come anywhere near the thing!  But over the course of the day he got braver and braver.  It even came with us to celebrate Easter at Nonnie & Grampie's house.  The uncles had quite a time chasing Eli around with it (which he mostly enjoyed by then) and it provided quite a bit of entertainment for us all.  By the end of the day he was willing to pick it up (but only by it's tail)!:)

We hope that you all had a wonderful Easter celebrating the resurrection of Christ and enjoying the life that His sacrifice brings!

A Rare Photo

One would think, given how many pictures I take, that I have lots of pictures of my children, together, looking at the camera.  Not the case.  Not at all. My children have long since tired of me taking their picture (in most cases) and trying to get them BOTH to be still long enough is next to impossible.  There aren't a lot of posed pictures of them together happening around here!  But, I managed to get this one after our Easter egg hunt on Easter morning.  It's a rare photo indeed!  So how did I do it?  Well, I asked them to shake their eggs at me.  Apparently looking at me for even two seconds isn't very exciting, but looking at me while shaking eggs full of candy is great fun (and good to remember for the future)!:)

Big Boy Bed!!!!

Above: Eli's first night in his big boy bed!

Below:  Nap time a week or two later (with a pair of his sister's flower sheets on the bottom while his got washed)!:)

Well, we've done it...we've moved Eli into a Big Boy Bed!!  It's been maybe a month now and he loves his big bed (a mattress and box spring on the floor).  None of it though has really gone as expected.  I expected that he would have a hard time falling asleep at nap time, but have an easier time going to bed for the night.  It's been the total opposite.  Usually at nap time he goes right to sleep (or every now and then comes out of his room once).  Bedtime?  That's a different story.  Bedtime has been difficult...he runs around, opens his door, yells for us until we come, and even sneaks into Lily's room to play (while she is asleep).  It was becoming pretty normal for it to take him an hour and a half or two hours to fall asleep at night (and wake up at the same time as normal in the morning)...uggghhh!  Even when we would put the baby gate at his door he would stand there and scream until we came (and we just couldn't let him scream because Lily is right across the hall and we didn't want her constantly getting woken up).  So the other day Joe switched door knobs to his room and for the last 3 nights we have been locking him in his room so he can't open the door and scream.  Now he just screams inside his room (which is much quieter).  And it's working...now that he's learning that we won't come up every time he screams he is falling asleep much faster (apparently it's just not worth all that effort)!:)  It's just like when we had to let him cry it out to learn to sleep through the night when he was a baby...and it's nearly just as heartbreaking for me to listen to...but I know it's the best thing for him (because getting two less hours of sleep a night has NOT been good for him at all).  And, don't worry, we unlock the door after he's asleep to be safe.  Thankfully he's always been great at staying in his bed once he's asleep (and he's only rolled out once or twice)!:)

Truth be told I would have been happier keeping him in his crib for the rest of the year, but we are preparing for a lot of travel this summer and Eli hates his travel bed now so it was just time...and hopefully we'll have a few more of the kinks worked out before we start traveling in about a month.  We took down the crib for the first time in five years...they are growing up!

Polished

It was a cold, dreary, rainy day outside, but inside it was nothing but pink and beautiful little girls at our friend Lily's birthday party!  This happens to be one of our Lily's best little friends and we loved celebrating her birthday with her.  The whole party was at a sweet little nail salon where each little girl guest had their nails done (and colored their own princess pillow cases).  This was Lily's first time having her nails done at a salon and, as you might imagine, she loved it!  Before she was even born I prayed that Lily would have wonderful, sweet little friends and I am so thankful to the Lord for each and every girl at her friend's party...each of them is such an answer to prayer!