Easter Egg Hunt

Gabby was able to participate in two Easter egg hunts this year. The first was at the church on Saturday. The second was in our front yard on Easter afternoon. The Easter Bunny brought Easter eggs for Gabby and Sasha to find. The hard-t0-find eggs were for Gabby and the easy-to-find eggs were for Sasha. Gabby had lots of fun looking for the eggs and was very successful at finding them.

Sasha, on the other hand, was not so interested in finding the Easter eggs. She was outside for almost five minutes before she realized that there were Easter eggs to be had. Who cares about candy when there are bugs and leaves and dandilions and bark chips and grass to eat?

Sasha, do you see the egg there?

Well, now it's right behind you. What are you eating?

In search of that egg. Where could it be?

Yeah! I found one! I'm good at this Easter egg hunting stuff.

Hmmm....what's inside here? Candy? Let's check this out.

The Easter Bunny did not think she would be able to open the eggs and put some chocolate candies inside. Well, Sasha is smarter than the Easter Bunny. She likes chocolate candies, apparantly. Like mother, like daughter. Happy Easter.

Easter at the Baird's

Well, the Easter Bunny did us proud this year. Gabby and Sasha were really spoiled and Gabby loves the Easter Bunny now because he brought her some fun things. Actually, the Easter Bunny had some help from Santa Claus with her presents. Santa saw how much Gabby got for Christmas and decided to leave one of her presents for the Easter Bunny to bring. How nice of him. :) Anyway, this was the first year that the Easter Bunny really came to our house, and it was fun to see how excited Gabby was with all the candy/presents. It makes holidays more fun when you can see them through your children's eyes.

Our Easter morning spoils.

Gabby unwrapping the first present.

Sleeping Beauty dress ups! Yeah! Now Gabby can be the princess she always knew she is. :)

What's more? Snow White dress ups! Gabby is in heaven.

Beautiful. They are a little big, but that's good. Then they will last longer, hopefully. :)

Snow White beauty. Gabby wore these dress ups for 3 days straight. We even had to go to the post office and grocery store with her wearing them. I guess this present is a hit. Good job Easter Bunny!

Sasha got this push toy from the Easter Bunny. It makes music. She loves it. Anything she can push around is a toy to her, so having something her size is even better. The handle adjusts lengths too so as she gets taller she can still use it. Our almost walker. She can only take about 3 steps unassisted. Someday she will get brave and just do it. But for now...

Also, Sasha started saying 'no' on Easter Sunday. It is her favorite word now. All day long, "No, no, no." Oh boy. That's Mommy's fault though for not finding other words to use besides the dreaded No. Fortunately she doesn't know how to use it yet, so it is still cute.

Happy Valentine's Day

In my husband's family, holidays are a big deal. Jay's mom always made holidays special by having a nice breakfast and nice holiday decorations. This includes birthdays, where the whole family gets up to make the birthday person breakfast before work/school. On Valentine's Day, this tradition also included some small present for each of the kids. Jay always talks about these memories and so I thought it would be fun to carry them on in our family. Gabby is now at the age where she can start to understand and care about holidays and presents, so I thought I'd start this year to make these events special occastions for her. Here is our Valentine's Day breakfast that we had this morning. In case you can't see: scrambled eggs with cheese on top, bacon, pancakes, milk or chocolate milk (as preference demanded), cantalope, and yummy Costco cinnamon rolls. Each of the girls got a present and Gabby made her Daddy a homemade Valentine card. Jay gave me some flowers a couple days ago, which you can kind of see in the picture. They are very beautiful. I got some paper plates and cups decorated with red and pink hearts, and red napkins for us to use with our meals today.

This is my one Valentine decoration, besides our dinnerware. So here we are as a family, with our Happy Valentine's Day presents. Gabby got a figurine of Belle and Ariel, and a Jasmine book. Sasha got a stuffed animal and a book about shapes. They were happy with their presents. They also got Valentine's Day cards from grandparents and Ggpa. Thanks for the great cards! We love them, and love you too! Thanks for thinking of us.

I'm glad I have this day to celebrate how much I love my family. My children are a joy to me and I feel so blessed that they are such sweethearts. Jay is the love of my life and my best friend. I am so so blessed and lucky to have found him and I love him so much. I hope you all have as much love and joy in your lives as I have in mine.

Halloween '08

So here are some pics of my cuties on Halloween. Jay found this cute onesie for Sasha at KMart (our only choice for shopping up here. Yeah for us). So she wore that during the day and then we put her in a fuzzy pajama that looks like a Piglet costume for the ward Halloween party. It was a fun evening, although I was dreading going. It just didn't sound fun. It was raining all day, the first day of cold that we had this fall so far. We had 70 degree weather all week before that, so I was kind of bummed that it got cold on Halloween. But it made the holiday feel more like Halloween, so that was good. And the ward thing was good too, turned out fun. That seems to be how things always go for me...something I'm unexcited about turns out to be fun and exciting. And Gabby was so excited to wear her costume and be Cinderella, since she thinks she is a princess anyway.

Hillbilly Mommy and Piglet Sasha on Halloween. I forgot to take a picture of Daddy, who was a nerd for Halloween. His costume turned out awesome too. I was bummed when I realized that I didn't take one. Especially since he doesn't dress up for Halloween very often. I have to capture those rare moments. Oh well. Next time.

Pretty Princess Gabby. So funny story about this dress. On Tuesday after Halloween, election day I guess, Gabby's friend Lauren was over playing. They were watching a Disney Princess sing-along DVD that we have. The last song on the DVD shows all the princesses dancing to a song. I was in Sasha's room and I was listening to Gabby and Lauren talk about the princesses. Lauren was telling Gabby that she was Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and that Gabby was Belle and Snow White. "Gabby, I'm the princesses with yellow hair because I have yellow hair and you're the princesses with black hair because you have black hair." Gabby was getting so upset that she couldn't be Cinderella. I heard her tell Lauren that she was Cinderella and they were going back and forth on this. Then Gabby was getting upset and she said "No Lauren, I'm Cinderella. Come on, I'm gonna show ya." Then she started walking back to Sasha's room where I was. I knew what she was up to. She wanted to show Lauren her Cinderella dress costume because she had been Cinderella for Halloween. That would prove that she is Cinderella. Lauren didn't come with her though. She was pretty upset by the whole thing. But I thought it was cute that she is so connected to that Cinderella dress. And that she said "I'm gonna show ya." She says that to me all the time. It's cuter if you can hear her say it, but you get the idea.

Those two are cute playmates, love to spend time together. They have found all kinds of things to do together, including drawing. They like to draw with markers. However, I have had to limit this activity because Lauren has taught Gabby how much fun it is to draw on yourself with the markers. The ones I have are not washable, so it takes a day or so to get it all off. Here's a sample of some of thier artwork:

That's what I get for not supervising the art project. Oh well. Lauren's mom Lisa told me that Lauren still had some blue on her face the next day when she went to preschool. Luckily it's not permanent. It's hard not to laugh at this, we were all laughing at them. (This was taken on Nov 2nd, we were having a get together at our house with some friends when the artists got to work). There was one other little girl, Payton, who had done the same thing, but she was not interested in being in the picture. Well, next time. :)