easter

it's a week late, but here we go....

we had a great easter weekend. my parents came up on friday afternoon, and we cooked burgers and watched a ton of basketball. fun stuff if you're part of this family. mississippi state won it's first round game against oregon, and charles "feed the beast" rhodes put on quite a show. go dogs!

on saturday, our country club held it's annual easter egg hunt/carnival. the weather was beautiful, and there was a ton of stuff for the little people to do. notice that i only have a picture of wes with the easter bunny. william is not a fan of people dressed up as anything, so he wouldn't go near the thing. i have yet to get a picture of him with santa or the easter bunny at any point in his life.

posing with the fake easter bunnies

in the jumpy thing
wes with the real easter bunny
showing my stuff on the ring toss
fishing for a ring pop (my favorite)
snow cones!!

after all that, it was finally time for the eggs. they didn't consult me, and they obviously don't give a flip what i think, however.......the way they hunt eggs is just crappy! each child was given a number, and they could only pick up eggs with their number on it. this would have been fine had there been, ya know, under 300 kids. try telling a 2 or 3 year old, "no, baby, put that down. it says 238. we're looking for #8." yeah, there were some not so happy kiddos out in that field. not to mention some not so happy parents. heck, we had 4 adults looking for eggs, and we never did find the 8 "assigned" eggs that we were supposed to find. that's the good thing about a 2 year old....he was quite happy with the candy inside his 6 eggs, and he never knew that there were 2 more still missing in action. wes was happy just to gnaw on the plastic outside of the egg. so, even though my two were content, i still believe that i can come up with 487 better ways to hunt easter eggs. that being said, i'm sure we'll be right back in the middle of that same field next year...complaining the whole time!! :)

found one
look, daddy!
tasty plastic
finally, an egg with #8 on it!
checking out my loot

that afternoon, we did some spring cleaning in the yard. it took my mom, dad, and chase to get the new bagger on the riding mower, but they finally got it on (with all the right screws in the correct places). we put my mom in charge of the little people, and chase mowed, my dad moved shrubs and spread pine straw, and i got out the hedger and went to town on everything that could be cut back. i had the sore back to go along with the hard work the next morning, but now we have that spiffy curb appeal that is sure to make passersby jealous!

on sunday, william and wes woke up to see what the easter bunny had left for them. william ignored his crocs and candy, and instead he went straight for a pair of bunny sunglasses. wes, after my own heart, went straight for the eggs. he didn't waste any time!

then, we got dressed and headed off to church.


easter is my favorite holiday. i love the spring time, i love the easter hymns, and i love the easter message. as we sat in the pew at the beginning of church, i was fully expecting to hear the story of the resurrection, but mark made a comment that he wasn't going to preach specifically on that. he was going to continue with our study of romans because it's not just easter sunday that we should celebrate the resurrection. each and every sunday (and day) should be filled with praises to god for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his one and only son. how true. what a sweet truth.

christ the lord is risen today.....hallelujah!

i'm thankful for...

i know that this post is supposed to be easter pictures, but i haven't uploaded them from my camera yet, so it ain't happening tonight!

in the past week, william and i have added a new element to his bedtime routine. after we say his prayers, we tell god one thing from the day that we are thankful for. this is just the greatest way to end my day. he comes up with some completely random stuff that we totally should be thankful for, but it has just never crossed my mind as something to thank god for. of course, i have gotten the occasional mama and daddy, the grandparents, etc., but it is usually just some off the wall something.

examples:
- vegetables
- sunflowers
- my bulldozer
- wes' tractor that can lift dirt way up high
- dirt
- hands

and tonight as we finished our prayers, i asked him what he was thankful for from today and he said, "the sky outside and the wheels that we get to have on the car." i can in all honesty say that i have never thanked god for the wheels on my car. but, where in the world would i be without the wheels on my car?? at home, i guess.

so tonight before you climb into bed, don't forget about those wheels outside in your garage, ok?

purrr-teee

just showing off the front of my house and my fancy schmancy front door. props to sarah brashier to for hooking me up with the new look. y'all check her out in my links section. she's all artsy like that...a total martha stewart!

in the mudhole with ben

unfortunately, i don't have a picture of the both of them all muddied up. to do so, i would have had to go inside to get my camera and leave the two of them alone......outside......together.......for a few seconds. and i fear what they could have accomplished alone......outside.....together.....in just a few seconds. therefore, i only have documentation of half of the muddiness (by the time i got my camera ben was changing clothes again for his nana's house...sorry, heather!) but, the squeals of delight were just too cute to break up the mud slinging.

decorating the eggs

mama explaining how it's done.

william going it alone.

william's got the hang of it. wes looks excited, doesn't he?

showing off the finished product. purple was by far the favorite color!

we're alive...barely

so, if you haven't heard "it's going around," let me be the first to tell you...IT'S FREAKIN' GOING AROUND! and we got it. bad.

last saturday night, william threw up around 8pm and then continued to do so for every hour throughout the night. (remember that post about william puking in the car? yeah, piece of cake.) it's one thing to take care of somebody with a stomach virus, but it's a whole 'nother ballgame when it's a 2 year old who doesn't get the concept of throwing up in the commode/garbage can/bucket/etc. and would rather throw up on himself/his bed/the carpet/couch/kitchen floor/etc. props to my washing machine for running 24/7 for a solid week. anyway, he continued like this for most of sunday. to make a long story short, wes got it sunday afternoon, i got it monday, and then chase got it on tuesday. i couldn't get my head off the pillow on tuesday morning, so chase called sarah kathryn who came over and graciously kept william and wes (who were not throwing up anymore....i thought.) yeah, she was sick all day thursday. (and sarah kathryn, if you happen to read this, i am soooooooo sorry! i'll make it up to you, i promise! you were such a blessing that tuesday!) anyway, william continued to throw up at least once in the middle of the night for the rest of week, but he was fine during the day. go figure. i was about to lose my mind on thursday when he threw up, yet again, so honey came up here and provided some much needed reinforcements. yay for honey! thank you so much for letting me get some sleep. on friday, everybody starting eating again, and i can say with jubilation that we all have officially recovered from the mutant stomach virus that tried to take us out. and, even though i had never cleaned up somebody else's vomit before 3 weeks ago, i do consider myself a professional now. please let me know if you need some tips!!

we did manage to get out of the house for a little bit at the end of the week. sweet sanity.

3 inches

spring break snow!

i love the weather. i should have gone into meteorology at state, but i went to pharmacy school instead. if anyone knows why...feel free to tell me.

anyway, i check the weather all the time, and i usually agree, but i'm always skeptical about the snow forecasts. i mean, they must tell us about once a month during the winter that it is going to snow....and it never, ever happens. big storm systems seem to always part like the red sea when they get to us, too, so when i heard about this projected 3 inches of snow....i doubted. even though i watched this huge mass of whiteness move across the radar this afternoon, i still didn't believe that it would actually hit us. remember, it was 70 degrees just 2 days ago, and i still have my flip-flops out. but, at about 3:30 this afternoon, i was proved wrong. and, william couldn't have been happier.

by the time it got dark, it was really coming down. he danced around in the snow flakes, tried to catch them, and tossed some snow balls.

even wes-man got out in it, although he didn't care for it too much.

maybe we can get some daytime pictures playing in the snow in the morning. or wait, is it going to be shorts/flip-flops weather tomorrow? maybe i'll just go stock up on claritin and the like because this crazy mississippi weather is sure to do a number on our whole house!

i'd like to buy a vowel, please!

those were the words i heard coming from the den tonight while i was cleaning the kitchen. that's right, my child is addicted to wheel of fortune. this has happened just this week. he first got a glimpse of it a few nights ago when the weather was so bad. i turned on the tv so i could see the little alert thingy at the bottom of the screen, and wheel of fortune was on. well, now he's hooked. he's asked me a million times in the last 2 days to watch wheel of fortune. unfortunately, it's not on the dvr list with dora and the backyardigans (though i may have to add it soon), so he has to wait until 6:30 to watch it. and believe you me...he does not forget. he acts like a crazy person pretending to spin the wheel and then clap for himself. then he shouts out letters, and he'll throw in an occasional "i'd like to buy a vowel, please!" and, then he'll yell at vanna to go touch those letters! i guess there are worse things he could watch.

the last few days when pat and vanna don't have his full attention, this cute little fireman has been "pouring out the fires" all over my house. apparently, they are everywhere.


and, when he tires of that, he takes a nap. but, not in the bed....oh, no. that would be too obvious. and comfortable. you know, because i paid good money for his bed. and his sheets. and his quilt. so....he sleeps in his window seat. probably dreaming of vanna.

a warm weekend (finally!)

i hate cold weather! i am a self-proclaimed hermit in the winter just because i can't stand all the coldness. my neighbors often comment on how they never see me when it's below 50 outside. give me 100 degree temperatures and sunshine, please! so anyway, much to my (and apparently my whole family and neighborhood's) liking, we had temps in the 70s all weekend. it was great, and we were outside for most of it. love that!!

my parents came to visit for a day or two before my mom leaves for italy this week. (she's going with a group of girls just to go. sounds fun, huh? i hope my friends are paying attention here.) anyway, we did lots of hanging out and eating. fun stuff.

my dad also brought some kites which william loved. unfortunately, there wasn't much wind on saturday when he was trying to teach him how to fly it, but they got it up in the air several times.










there was plenty of wind on sunday afternoon, however, and the kites were off. for a $2 kite from wal-mart, these things could go. you did good, daddy! we got out in our cul-de-sac and played with our neighbors, the surholts. i'm not sure who had more fun with those kites...the big boys or the little boys! william and ben had a blast flying them. ben figured it out really quickly, and he flew it for a long time until he managed to get tangled up in the string. and, i do mean tangled. there wasn't an arm or a leg that wasn't wrapped up, and he was not the least bit happy about it. but, i managed to get him free, and they were back at it. when they tired of kites, they played bumper cars with their front loaders. luckily, we all escaped without any tears, scratches, bumps, or bruises! wes and walt just sat happily beside each other taking it all in. wes even got in on the flying after a while.

after this beautiful weekend, it is supposed to rain tomorrow and snow on tuesday. if anyone needs me, i'll be hibernating!