Easter Weekend (Part I)

Easter weekend was so much fun! We decided to spend the weekend in Monroe since Jessie and her family were going to be down there as well and we hardly ever get to see them. It's always so relaxing in Monroe. There aren't any worries in the world, always good food and definitely good company. Lena and I road down with Becky and Mary (Randy's Grandma) on Friday night and Randy joined us later on Saturday after his merit badge pow wow was over. Friday night was so much fun! Lena was a little weary of all of the "new" people who she doesn't see as often, but by the time Saturday rolled around, she was ready to get down and play. Here a some pictures of what took place:

Jessie is a teacher and her school had a dance day, where all of the classes had their own dance. Chris was so cute with his and made sure to practice a lot with his mom, so she knew it too. :) They performed it together for us. :) (Andy was being too shy to do his dance for us, but we saw a video of his and he did great!)

Grandpa hanging out on the couch with his grandchildren. :)

Andy and Grandpa!

Chris had a little purple bunny that he had gotten with a kids meal and was SO nice to share it with Lena. Lena was sure to let Chris' bunny experience lots of fun things. Like riding on Mater for example. :)

Here's Lena in her Easter shirt on Saturday. I was so excited to finally put shorts on her, but of course, it wasn't QUITE warm enough for shorts so we ended up changing her back into pants before she went outside.

Lena is ready to go outside! Yay for sun!

This is her sick of me asking to smile for me. :) "Come on mom, just let me go play outside"

"Throw"

So one thing that Lena always does that I just have to get in writing is she gets frustrated very easily when something doesn't work right away. (I will admit she got this from me). So if she is trying to get a lid on something and it gets cross threaded and doesn't go on just right she will freak out and yell "THROW!" as she chucks it across the room. She also chucks things across the room while saying "THROW!" if someone is trying to take it from her or if I tell her not to touch it. :) Oh the joys of a frustrated little child. :) I do have to admit... makes me smile every time.

Officially a Recorder

It happened... I said something the other day that Lena decided to repeat, making me realize that it probably wasn't the best thing for me to say... and I got wondering what else I do that I don't really want her to learn:

So Randy had done something to make me frustrated so to try and make things lighter I said "You drive me nuts!"

Next thing I know, Lena is walking around the kitchen saying "Dy-me NUTS!" with a big emphasis on the word "nuts". It was pretty funny but maybe I shouldn't get so frustrated with Randy in front of her. ;)

Some Stories From Nonna's

So I went to pick up Lena after work yesterday and my mom had a couple of stories to tell about what the kids have been up to.

First story, my mom was letting them have some chocolate eggs from Easter. She cut up the eggs in small pieces and put them on a plate and would hand them the pieces one at a time. Well, Lena really wanted to hold the plate with all of the pieces and kept trying to grab it but my mom would say "When you finish that one I'll give you another one"... Lena started to get frustrated and finally said "I need to have it!" just like that... I didn't even know she knew the meaning of the word "need", let alone put it in a 5 word sentence!

The next story is that Jimmy was pushing a "gino" (short for passagino which means stroller in Italian) around and accidentally tipped it over and fell... knowing that he wasn't hurt my mom said "You're okay, jump up" so he did and kept on going... well, Lena thought that was pretty funny and she decided to tip hers over too (yes, we got two of them so they would stop fighting over the one) and fall down and looked at my mom, waiting for her to tell her to "jump up" and she did... Lena thought this was the funnest thing and did it over and over again... Jimmy caught on too, so she had two kids falling down with their strollers on purpose for quite a while. :)

Getting Crafty Again

Last night was another one of those sleepless nights where all I can do is think about things and NOT sleep. So instead of wasting time just laying there, I decided to get up and get to work on an idea I had been thinking about. A hair accessory organizer for Lena. Until this point, I had all of her stuff in a box and every time I wanted to put a bow in her hair I would have to dump the whole box out to find the one I wanted. I had a friend who made a bow organizer out of a canvas board and rick-rack (I think that's what it's called) and thought it was so cute. I didn't have either of these things, so decided to see what I could make with what I had. I had some fun customizing it:

Expressions!

When I was outside with Lena AND my camera I decided to do a photo shoot, as usual and tried to see if I could get any cute pictures of Lena... well, of course that wasn't hard. :) My favorite part about this particular photo shoot was having a model who actually responded to me! I asked Lena to give me a BIG smile... and as you can see in the pictures... she did :) Then I asked her to give me a little smile and she looked confused for a minute and then gave a smile slightly smaller than the previous. I was so impressed that she actually did what I asked. She is so smart. :) After that I wanted to have a little more fun and asked her to give me a mad/sad face. :) She totally did! Oh it was so much fun!

Lady Bug

So the day we celebrated Randy's birthday was super nice so of course we had an adventure outside with Alex and Jimmy while Rosie went hard to work on the yummy apple pies. :) On our adventure, Alex happened to spot a lady bug and was so excited to show Jimmy and Lena. He was so cute to let them see it and to let them hold it. Lena accidentally poked it and we were afraid that the poke was too much for the little fellow, but alas, the little bug rolled back onto its feet and started walking again... thankfully! I was sure to let Lena know that we need to be "soft" with little bugs after that. :)