Easter

Our Easter was really nice and relaxing. We stayed here- no traveling. The weather was beautiful- 70! Church was great and we were home at noon. My brother and his wife came from San Francisco. We actually don't see them very often because they're really busy but we were very happy they could be with us. We had a typical Easter dinner- ham, funeral potatoes, peas and carrots, rolls, Swedish Sparkling Cider, Fruit salad, and a chocolate silk pie. Yum yum. Seriously, the pie is really good and it's store bought! Check your grocery store's frozen section and look for the Claim Jumper Chocolate Silk Pie. So good. The Easter Bunny came in the morning and left a little bit of candy and a few little toys things. Then after dinner, we had an Easter Egg hunt. The girls had a blast! It was nice to do it in our backyard this year. For the past few years, we've had dirt and rocks as our landscaping but now we've got grass and plants and it's really nice. We all just relaxed outside while the kids played. I'm telling you, it was very very typical and relaxing. Just right. We were just missing a few more family members . . . Maybe next year.

Here are the kids in their Easter church outfits.

I for some reason didn't get any pictures of them actually doing the egg hunting but I think my brother did. So maybe I'll be able to post a few more Easter pics when I get them.

School Projects

Well, I got my first taste of what the whole science fair project thing is going to be like. On Friday both Ashley and Ainslee had 2 projects due. Ashley needed to build a Leprachaun trap (the teacher called it a hotel) and had to take 20 individual portions of a treat for their party. Ainslee had to decorate a spring hat for the hat parade and 20 filled plastic Easter eggs. It didn't help that Cory has been out of town this whole week. He did do the hat and hotel before he left, which helped. But holy cow, I was up until 12:30 the night before finishing all the loose ends. Ahh, crazy. But Cory was VERY excited to do this whole leprachaun hotel thing. He actually went out and bought a whole new drill bit set just for it. Here are a bunch of pictures from it all:

This is the top view:

So it's a pot with gold coins glued inside with a lid. Ashley hides out in the woods and when she sees the leprachaun climbing up the ladder to get the coins, she pulls the trigger and the lid spins closed and latches so "Lucky" the leprachaun is trapped.


Here is the front view. Notice the ladder made from pipe cleaner.




Here is the side view:




It was mostly thought up by Ashley (honest), Cory did the construction, and Ashley decorated it.


Here's Ainslee in her spring hat that she and Cory did together. She and her pre-k class paraded around the school for the kindergarteners to see.




Ainslee then had an Easter Egg hunt at the playground. She was so proud to find 16 eggs. Yeah, all mommy wants is to have to deal with more candy (my kids are addicted). Isn't that a cute Easter Bag she made in class. I love the Q-tip whiskers. Good idea for a craft.




And to end the day, we all played at the park while we waited for Ashley to get out of school.

Ashley's tooth

So it's official- Ashley lost her first tooth last night. We noticed her adult tooth growing in about 2 weeks ago so we told her to really start wiggling her tooth hard. She kinda did. So last week we decided to go drastic and tie some floss around it and yank. She cried and was not happy. Every time Cory pulled, the floss would just slip off. The funny thing is that the tooth was so loose in the back that when Cory pulled, the tooth would go completely vertical, just hanging by a thread (or root?). That actually happened 2 nights between last week nand this week. We caught it all on video. And everytime the floss came off we were all holding our breath waiting to see the tooth on the other end. It never worked! Well last night, I was gone visiting someone in our ward. The kids were all in the bathtub and Ainslee threw a wet washcloth at Ashley. And POP! It fell out. Cory was out of the room and when he came in Ashley was crying and her mouth was full of blood. Ainslee was crying because she felt bad and I'm sure the other kids were crying not knowing what was going on. So Cory dipped his arms in the bloody bath water to find the tooth that was now at the bottom of the tub. Luckily he found it and Ashley's mouth stopped bleeding. All was good. She put the tooth under her pillow and the Tooth Fairy left a note saying "Thank you for your tooth" with a $5 bill which the Tooth Fairy spouse (me) thought was way too much money even for a first tooth. Even Ainslee got $1 and a note saying "Thanks for helping me get Ashley's tooth." She really did feel bad. And boy, is Ashley's adult tooth BIG!!!!





Here is Ashley earlier in the week freaked out by the whole floss-pulling-out-the-tooth thing






Here is what Ashley looks like now





And the culprit, Ainslee

Disneyland and Strollers

I don't know who reads my blogs but who ever does, I have some important information for you regarding Disneyland. Hello- they do not rent out double strollers anymore!!!! What the heck?!? And if you're like us and you think you can just get a single stoller and shove 2 kids into it, sorry you're out of luck. They have actually redone their single strollers too. They are now single jogging stollers which makes it nice to manuever around but there is absolutely no way in the world you could stick 2 kids into it. Believe me, we tried. Hard. So before you go, decide how you want to do strollers before you get there.