Happy Birthday~

Happy birthday to my handsome hubby!

Easter Morning~

I might have gone a little bit "overboard" with the presents, but most were after Christmas clearance.

This is typical Zachary.  Always wearing his blankie around like a cape.  I learned at a GATE seminar that math geniuses tend to like to have some sort of lovely.  One morning he said out loud on the way to school, "Yes!  Today we are going to learn ___ in math!"  Can't remember what it was, but I am sure he is one of the only 11 year olds in America who says stuff like that. 

Never can have enough mechanical pencils!

My smart, handsome, funny, silly, strong, athletic, loving boy.  But you know he keeps me on my toes!

Landen has been asking for Farm Duplo since he got the garden one for Christmas.  Wasn't as excited as I thought he'd be, but maybe because he finally got a space shuttle?? 

When Zach and Mikayla were little they loved watching the cartoon Max and Ruby based on the books by Rosemary Wells.  There's one episode where they hunt eggs and the winner is supposed to get a chocolate chicken.  Well I think Zach was either 3 or 4 and he fully expected there to be a chocolate chicken on Easter morning.  He was devatasted when there wasn't one.  Just couldn't understand why the Easter bunny didn't bring one.  I searched everywhere that year for one and never found anything.  Now it seems like they are everywhere.  Landen loves Max and Ruby too and we had just read the book about the chocolate chicken.  

He found the chocolate chicken!

Pretending to be a giraffe.  Aka, his favorite animal.

Oh, be still my heart!

He looooooves his sissy so much!

I think it took about 40 minutes for him to build this one.  

So sweet!

Zach patiently did this tye dye egg and I loved how it turned out!

I didn't get many pictures from our egg hunt in Bakersfield, but Landen had the best time with Austin!  Austin would give him clues and then when Landen would find it he would say, "I told you Austin!"

My beautiful *almost* teenager.

Easter Weekend~

Zach and Landen have this little game they play where they point out every Hummer they see and yell, "Hummer! Claim it! I win!" Just one of those silly brother things.  So one morning after we dropped Zach off at school Landen saw a Hummer and yelled, "Yellow Hummer!  Claim it!  I win!  Mommy!  He's tweeting and texting!  He's tweeting and texting!"  None of us have a twitter account so I have no idea where he heard that but I thought it was hilarious.  That boy is growing up in a very different world.  He absolutely hates listening to the radio because he has never known car rides without a DVD player.  He is very adept at working "his" iPad and my iPhone.  I'm not usually good at incorporating current events into my blog posts and I know years from now it will be fun to look back and see how life used to be.  So I will say that we still have the original iPad.  Like the first kind that came out and Jeff and I still have iPhone 3gs.  I'm sure someday our grand kids will read this on their iPhone 50's.

 Easter weekend we dyed some eggs and had some egg hunts since we were going to be gone on Easter.  Zach and Landen played outside all day.  Landen is so enamored with his big brother.  Zach went to put his bike in the garage and Landen was absolutely heart broken that brobro was gone for even 10 seconds and this was his reaction.

 Don't worry!  Literally a moment later he was back to this.

Doesn't he look like such a big boy!?!

Mikayla wasn't too interested in dyeing eggs this year, but even though Landen remembered doing it last year it was truly magical for him this year.

 When the first egg came out of the dye he gasped with amazement at the change in color.  

Ignore the huge mess on that counter behind Jeff.  Although, you can see the original iPad back there. It's the equivalent of carrying a boom box around on your shoulder.

He kept shouting, "Wow!!!"

Of course, Landen loved the green ones!

Zach had spring break last week and Mikayla has it this week, so we really couldn't do anything.  Not even really a stay cation.  Some of us are also getting over another cold.  Ugh!  Dealing with all this sickness this winter has definitely been challenging and we've all had our fair share of crankiness because of it.  I feel like it has been a good lesson in grace for us as a family.  And really that is what Easter is all about.  We received grace we didn't deserve, so the least we can do is extend that same grace to each other.  We are still learning!