Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a nice Easter! 

Lily and I were off work/school Thursday, Friday and today. She's been hanging out with her friends at daycare (Nate too) so I've had some time off around the house. Thursday and Friday were a mix of relaxing, working, shopping and getting ready for Easter. Luckily I finished our taxes too so that's nice! 

As for Easter, we had a great family lunch with my parents, Doug's parents, and my aunt and uncle. The littles (just my two) got some presents and had a small egg hunt in our Lily's Garden. My parents gave Nate a water table (which will definitely be put to use by both kiddos!) and Lily got Ariel's undersea castle from Legos. She loves the Disney Princess Lego castles and has almost all of their sets. 

Family - there are more photos on Facebook if you haven't seen them already. 

I didn't get much done on house jobs as I'd like due to some crummy weather, but I did get a few new plants purchased and planted. Nothing major, but some pot fillers basically and one white Bleeding Heart. I just love them!! More plants will be purchased next month before Lily's birthday. There's one spot (to the right behind Nate in the photo) that I always plant Gerbera Daisies. I'll probably do that again this year as Lily likes to pick out some colors. A few pots need some color too as I moved a few around. Luckily we get off a week or so before her actual birthday, giving me time to get the garden looking good!! 

{Holidays} Easter 2010 and 2011

After posting the Easter pictures from today, I thought I'd look at the pictures from 2010 and 2011. Lily was almost one in 2010 and she actually started walking on Easter. Easter 2010 was great and all seemed well in the world. 2011 was a completely different story. My brother wasn't doing well but we tried to have a normal holiday. I put three of my favorite photos from each year so the post wouldn't be long.

Crawling on the floor in her bedroom. Such a cutie!!

Sitting on our porch swing.

Family photo, 2010.

Hanging with Uncle Jesse, 2011.

Family photo, 2011.

Tired Lily, 2011. She was exhausted by then and you can tell by her chin, she had already enjoyed her share of chocolate!

Happy Easter everyone!

More photos from 2011 can be seen here in Part 1 and Part 2.

{Holidays} Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! Miss Lily is our shinning star and has gotten us through a lot as a family so instead of focusing on that, I'm going to focus on her. And her Easter this year.

We stayed at our house for the hunt and then went out to lunch with my cousin, aunt, uncle, parents, and our little family of three. My other cousin was working during the time and got to come over for a few minutes for going to work. Plus, she was our waitress, so that was kind of fun. Too bad she couldn't have been eating with us though, but when you're 21, the money is always good when you can make it!

As you can tell by the photos to come (there's a lot!), the Easter bunny was very generous. :-)

Getting into the swing of it after some help with the first few eggs.

Finding the eggs in the front flower garden.

Sneaking some chocolate in with Babby and cousin Lauren.

Enjoying the egg hunt (this was basket number 1 of 3!)

One of the best photos we've had in awhile.

LOVE this photo!!!

Counting her loot.

Walking the bridge after lunch.

The other bridge (not in service anymore) and the Missouri River.

Turtles! There was a snake too but I don't think he's in this shot.

Lily's new favorite toy after the Easter bunny left some for her. She is in love with "George" the horse (she didn't name it, she'e never named anything but likes to have names for things) and it was "Brad" the turtle but then she said it was a girl, so I think we've decided on Daisy. Those two must be her favorite as they made the cut for lunch and our the only two she's carrying around with her right now.

Easter (part 2)

The second set of pictures... from the Easter Egg Hunt! I think Lily is still a little young to really get the whole idea, but we did it anyway. I had put candy in some plastic eggs earlier (mainly for us adults, but we were all too full to eat any!), but we put those out for Lily. She went around, picked them up, and tried to open each one after picking it up. She would then take a piece of candy (jelly beans, chocolate, malted milk Robin eggs), and then we'd be able to get her to find another piece. She gave some of the eggs away to people watching her. She's really not a huge candy kid (we don't give her much, if any, at home), so she enjoyed the little bit that she got. I'm sure next year will be a completely different story so we may do real eggs or do something else inside the plastic eggs. We'll deal with that when next year arrives.

Here's Lily putting eggs in her basket.

On the hunt!

Eating some of the candy.

Checking out the eggs with Uncle Jesse. He crouched down, so she had to too.

Looking for eggs...

Can you say TIRED??!! This is the same look her momma, daddy, and uncle Jesse get...

A close up of the TIRED BABY!

Playing

I think this may be their other cat, Leia, but I'm not sure since they look so similar (and no, they aren't related).

Easter (part 1)

This year's Easter was a little different than previous years, but it was a lot of fun as well. Our family normally has someone who volunteers for the meal but with everything going on this year, it appears that everyone was busy doing their own thing and it just didn't happen. I was going to take on the challenge but then my brother's girlfriend mentioned going to an all you can eat buffet at one of the hotels. So we did that - all 12 of us (my parents, Doug, Lily and I, my brother and his girlfriend, his girlfriend's parents, her brother and his girlfriend, and my brother's girlfriend's fav student). It was a lot of fun. The food was delicious, no one had to worry about cooking and cleaning, and we enjoyed the time together. We did meet up at my brother's house and then went back there for awhile afterwards (and did an Easter egg hunt at their house for Lily). Here are some photos from after dinner (should have gotten one before, but oh well).

This one is just too cute. She did not want to take the family photo below (3 of the 4 family photos have her legs all in weird poses because she was dying to get down to play). So after we gave up, I let her go and my mom caught her in movement... It is definitely her normal behavior now that she is a month away from being 2.

She was not happy to take this photo, but we have one almost similar to this (same position of all of us) from last year, so it'll be fun to compare in years to come.

She found our basket to her... Elmo and Sesame Street everything! She has become obsessed with him lately (as do all 2 year olds) and so I decided to get her a stuffed toy and some figurines from Target's Easter/dollar section (gotta love the price!... except the stuffed toy, it's just a regular toy from Target). She really likes the Sesame Street spiral notepads and she already has two, so I bought her the other two versions for her basket. They are great to keep in my purse with a pen or crayons so she can color or scribble when we're out.

Here are the bunny ears that most of you saw on Facebook. She actually kept them on for a little while today, but then took them off for the rest of the day once she got tired. Luckily I got some pics of her (and her daddy!) in them.

And this is at the buffet, as she was leading us into the room. "Come on" is a favorite phrase of her's right now, so she'll say it a lot when she wants to go somewhere. And of course, having 11 people to look at her and do as she says, she was eating up the extra attention!

Lulu, my brother's dog... she couldn't decide to play with the soccer ball or chew on a stick, so she did both!

Lily and Mary

Uncle Jesse and Lily, playing soccer. Lily does a really good job of kicking the ball!

Lily and Mary playing with Lulu.

Walking with her eyes covered.

Bumping heads after Lily walked across the yard with her hands over her eyes.

Lily playing after walking with her hands over her eyes. "Tada!"

Lily checking out one of their cats, Vito. Isn't he beautiful?! Their other cat, Leia, is very similar in markings. They both have really pretty blue eyes too. :-)


Lulu... isn't she beautiful?