Spring a little late...

I am going to just have to forget catching up with Christmas.  It's an important family holiday.  We took pictures and had a great time, but they will probably never make it to this blog...so on to Easter is what I say.  After all, that was only a couple of months ago as opposed to my usual six-month lag time.

The Rogers family toyed with the idea of our traditional Easter egg hunt at the park, but decided to skip it this year.  Everyone was worn out, moving, pregnant, or all of the above.

We did do a hunt with the Richardson family in my parents' back yard with the grand kids who live here.

My mom had these marshmallow-filled chocolate eggs for the kids, but Dylan was not a fan.

Amelia thought they were great...

Dylan said, "Ewwww!  Nastehhhh."

Simon liked the Easter eggs as shakers more than containers of delectable treats.

And here are the little egg hunters brandishing their booty.

A Little Wizarding

If I actually want to take a short little video, my camera refuses to do so.  However, if I am trying to take a picture of one of these darling cherubs and switch over from the playback mode to the picture mode, my camera will briefly decide to take a little video.  The result of this finicky quirk is that I get these funny little video/pictures.  It's a bit like Harry Potter and the photographs in his wizarding world. 

Except, no one is really that magical or wears pointed hats.  Our magic wands are just sticks that fell out of the tree when the wind blew hard.  And they don't work very well.

Darling

All of the following photos fit under the figurative "darling" umbrella.

Simon as baby bear...

Messy face baby...darling with a touch of gross

Dylan art entitled "eyelashes"

Dylan art entitled "smile or chin?"

Dylan the artist hard at work

Dylan the artist hard at work but still managing a smile for mom

Amelia art: "angels"

"Rudolph and Feline"

"Rudolph the bachelor"

"Authentic letter to the elf on the shelf, answered by the elf on the shelf"

"Amelia: self-portrait"

Uh, we don't take ourselves very seriously in our house...

Um, holidays I forgot to mention

I know, I know. I always start out with some disclaimer about how lame I am about posting regularly to this blog. So this time, I'm just going to say that I am lame at posting but awesome at other things. What those other things are is a seldom divulged secret. In fact, I'm not sure that I even know what they are.

I figured that it is important to record some details about Simon's first Halloween, even though he really didn't do much to celebrate the day or even care that it was Halloween. Nonetheless, this is what we did.

We put Simon in a pumpkin hat and onesie. We skipped a full blown costume, but his striped pants had a jack-o-lantern applique on the bum. This was festive enough, I say.

A week before the big day, we started the Halloween preparations by frosting cookies. These are the bat cookies that I did. The kids did the rest and they got scarier and scarier as we went: eyeless Frankenstein heads, sugared and sprinkled purple and green pumpkins, orange and white ghosts with three eyes and more sugar and sprinkles, half-frosted, unidentifiable shapes. You get the idea.

Then of course we carved pumpkins. Evan is always the designated carver and gut remover.

This is the face Dylan wanted carved on his pumpkin.

And this is how it turned out.

Not bad.

Amelia drew the face for her jack-o-lantern and directed all of the carving.

And her finished product...

We plopped the jack-o-lanterns out in front of the door and lit them up each night until Halloween.

Here are the three munchkins donning their costumes for the Saturday night Halloween party. There was clearly a Batman theme this year. Amelia actually had a really cute sparkling pink mask that finished off her Batgirl costume, but she chose to use Dylan's extra mask instead.

She's so conflicted.

To this same party, I wore a green t-shirt that said "Good Witch" on it and threw black cat ears on my head. It was called "thrown-together-at-the-last-minute."

Evan wore swim trunks, a surf t-shirt, his shaggy blond surfer's wig and a fake tattoo sleeve. He had his beard still grown out so we dubbed him "What might have been."

Stay tuned for the Christmas report...

likely to appear in June.

Dylan's trip to the dairy farm

I ran across these pictures that I haven't yet posted (I realize that I haven't posted much of anything the last little while--three kids are kicking my butt).

Anyway, Dylan and Simon and I went on a field trip for Dylan's preschool class in October to a local dairy farm. And it didn't stink, which was remarkable in my opinion. I think the neighbors actually liked having the dairy farm nearby.

Here's Dylan on the hay ride, learning about where food comes from and watching a lot of cows stand around. He gave me one of those painful I-don't-really-feel-like-smiling-for-a-picture faces because the stationary cows were much more interesting than I was apparently.

Here he is with his cousin Brody who, at times, found the hay more interesting than the cows.

Dylan's cousin Brooklyn came dressed in boots and braids and had no qualms about holding a chicken. At one point she held two of them simultaneously.

There was no love lost between Dylan and the chickens, but he was happy to pet the large black rabbit as long as it didn't move too much.

He did agree to feed the horse a bit of carrot mainly because all of the other kids were doing it and he didn't want to be left out. I was lucky to get this shot because he fed the horse and backed away faster than you can say "Dairy farms are cool."

After some flavored milk fresh from the farm and some puddle jumping and rock throwing, Dylan came over to me and said, "Mom, I'm done with this. Let's go home."

And we did.

New Family Pictures

No time for commentary...here are just a few photos from downtown Tempe in late October. Our friend Sarah Hales took them.

A few random things I forgot to mention

Simon is changing every single day. I swear he's a different baby each morning.

Amelia was a temporary wizard.

She didn't do any magic. Instead she practiced fanciful cape flourishes.

Dylan became a rather proficient swimmer this summer. He took lessons with Grandma Phillis (she's absolutely amazing!). Ashley was the junior instructor pictured here.

Dylan really mastered his flying jumps from the steps. He wanted me to watch every single time. He'd be poised on the edge of the step ready to leap into the air and he'd turn and say, "Mom, watch me dive!" Then, when I was looking, and only when I was looking, he'd hurl his body into the air and swim madly to Ashley or his Grandma. He'd reach them and then pop up out of the water with this huge toothy grin on his face. It was darling!

Oh yeah. And one other little thing. Our kids took a picture with Jesus.

Well, they took a picture with their dad dressed as Jesus. To help out a friend's art and photography business (Captured Miracles) Evan grew out a beard, got an excellent wig and posed for a day as the Savior. He reports that it was both an intimidating and amazing experience.