Happy Easter!

Not Actually on Easter, but fitting for this post.

The day after Elijah's birthday party was Easter Sunday. It's hard to believe that was less than a week ago, but it was. We had a really nice morning- Church and then Brunch at Bob & Bridgets followed by an easter egg hunt. Katie and Dad came which made it extra special.

I must say, we are raising a pretty good kid in Elijah (if we don't say so ourselves). This kid was in to the easter egg hunt and loved finding eggs, but when his basket was full he didn't try to over stuff or collect more. He just looked at it, and then up at me and said "I all done!"  He also didn't stop to open the eggs and eat all the candy inside like his cousins, he just went along on his merry way, collecting eggs.  NOWWWW, once he was done, he did find a nice cozy spot on my dad's leg to relax and access his spoils. I didn't really think anything of it, with dad watching over him and he was acting pretty darn good. It wasnt' until we got home that I decided to go through his basket and empty out all the eggs, ridding them of most of the candy that I found this little fact out...out of, lets say 25 eggs, there was 1, ONE ONE egg had candy in it! That little poop ate all the candy out of every egg in his basket, and you know who I blame? MY DAD!

Some supervision- ha!  Oh well, I did notice at one point a large pile of jelly beans which he doesn't like, so that gave me some peace of mind. You can image my shock though, to find 24 empty eggs....oy.

Lucas is still too small to get the whole easter egg hunt thing, so he just chilled in the swing - his favorite place to be, and observed the whole time.
(P.S. Sorry there is not really a picture of Elijah's face...it was a little hard to capture the moving target)

I must say, by the end of the weekend I was ready for a day off, but Monday morning came beckoning all too fast.

Sorry I Don't Know What Happened

Hi!
I was waiting to post Elijah's birthday until I got a couple more pictures in, which I did just now. I thought that i still had that and Easter to post and when I went in to the App. that I use on my phone to write the posts, it said that the birthday was already published last week along with "Eyes" which I showed was still in draft form on my phone, but not when I got on the computer.  So you will have an updated birthday post now, with new pictures, and Easter will be published tomorrow.

Love
K

Happy 3rd Birthday Elijah!

We are a week and a half past Elijah's 3rd Birthday and lets just say he had an extended birthday that was nothing short of wonderful!  We celebrated one day early because Aaron had class on Elijah's exact birthday, and some of you wonderful people had sent him gifts to open (I am just going to say now, that the few things we bought him, we A. never wrapped and B. haven't given him, because you all were SO generous! WOW! Thank you!). So I stopped by Krispy Kreme and picked up a birthday doughnut, which was perfect! We lit three little candles and sang a great birthday song and then let him TEAR in to his packages.  Was he excited!

Last picture is of all the cars he got and put in to his lunch box :)

I have thank you cards that I need to send out, but with our next few weeks, I am not sure when they will get out, so please let this be the place holder for the thank you card: Mom, Vicki, Aunt Lynn, Aunt Dawne and of course GiGi!  - Vicki I have yet to get a picture of Elijah in his super cool - super hero cape, but I will post it as soon as I do!

Then Tuesday Dad and I took Elijah to Ol'McDonalds for dinner (we even went inside! oooo! Big deal for Elijah, cuz we usually drive thru) for his birthday. We got him a McFlurry as a special birthday treat and guess who ate it all? - ME. Because the kid would on lick it with the very tippy top of his tounge. Oy.
(Sorry no pictures of that)

My little shoppers at Costco getting all the party stuff.

Then Saturday we had Elijah's BIG birthday party with all of his friends. I was prepared for 18 kids to be there (at our local park that was built when I was a kid), however only 10 showed up- fine by me. It was Disney's Car theme and I was able to pull together some great ideas from this website called "pinterest". Here are the things that I literaly worked on all week and stayed up until midnight Friday night making.

They are little cars made out of boxes- I later realized that I should have cut them down by half because he tripped all over the place with it being so long.

"Mater"

"Doc" and "Lightning McQueen"

Party favors- Rice Crispy Treat "Stoplight" with a Winner's Circle Trophy and Checkered Flag closure.

Lightning McQueen that I did NOT make (thank you Safeway!) 

Sliced black olives as "TIRES"

Appropriate Speed Limit Sign

Elijah and his best friend Jackson playing with all the new trains that Grandma and Grandpa (De Mers) got him.

Swing Batter Batter - Sorry its small a friend took it and posted on Facebook.

All in all I think it was a GREAT birthday for Elijah. He loved opening presents, he loved his party and he loved singing "Happy Birthday" and now he is ready for the next birthday in our family - his cousin Hannah who will be 2 in mid May. Whew- I am pooped.  Just wait til you hear what we did the next day...it was Easter Sunday. See you back here tomorrow!

Fun filled day

Our day started off with two kids and quickly became four by quarter to eight this morning, as we took on the task of watching Aaron's brothers two kids Hannah (23 months) and Evan (7months). The kids had a great time playing together and we sat off for the city Easter egg hunt at 11:00 where we met up with the rest of our friends. The kids scored some Easter eggs and we headed to grandmas house around 12:30 for some lunch and a hand off off the niece and nephew. From there we were back down to our two kiddos and off to Vacaville for a back yard BBQ. Our friends had a pool and of course we didn't come prepared so Elijah was soaked twice over, naked for a bit and left at 6 in at shirt socks and a diaper hahaha. We had such a whirlwind day and are exhausted but I was able to squeeze out a post. Hope you enjoy.

**Unfortunately, I did not get this posted on Saturday night as intended, so it's your Friday morning eye opener 2 weeks, almost 3 weeks post event)**

In his on little place...

...in his own little tub...

...sat a little boy, in a swimming pool made for one!

Lucas and Mommy Enjoying the sun!

Eyes

In the first few weeks of Lucas little life we found out two not so pleasant things about him 1. That he had a mild-moderate case of lactose intolerance and 2. That he had a partially blocked tear duct in his left eye that would cause it to weep constantly.

Over the past year the weeping eye has improved a bit, but is still present so our pediatrician referee Licas to an eye specialist with te notion that he may have to have a little surgery to fully open the tear duct. Any surgery loing over ones head will make one anxious and even more so when it's your child. But we are not new to this looming anxiety as we have been dealing with a similar situation with Elijah and his ears (which seem to be vastly improving). So we headed off to the opthamology appt the other day to find out what they had to say. 

Our Kaiser doctor was wonderful and really gave Licas the full treatment. It was an hour and a half appt. checking his vision, checking his tear productivity ( see orange scary eyes below), and dial acting his eyes. And the result- well since we have seen improvement over the past year and since his duct is only mildly blocked we all decided that we will stave off the surgery for a year and pray that he grows out of it. However, if there is no improvement by next February we will need to put our little guy in the O/R and fix his little eye issue. So yes that will be in the back of our minds for the next year, but at least we don't have to do anything about it now. Whew!

I Owe You a Lot of Posts

We have had a ton, and I mean  A TON going on. And it is not for lack of trying that I haven't posted. I am having issues getting my photos to load to the blog and blog posts are pretty boring with out photos. I was finally able to get some loaded from two weeks ago with is about one months more than I was able to get a few days ago. Slowly but surely they are populating, so I really apologize for the long delay. Once the issue is solved there will be lots of posts. Until then, here are a couple of random pictures I was able to pull from the last month.

Cousin Love- Aiden (not our cousin, but an extended cousin; Hannah, Evan; Lizzy, Jack; Elijah, Lucas; and Eddy again not our cousin by an extended)

Hannah (23 months) and Lizzy (2.5 years) (Aaron's Brother #3's girl and Brother #2's girl)

...and just like that all my pictures finally populated. Soooooo you can expect a daily post for AT LEAST the next FULL week. I will start populating them now!

Love

K

Making playdough

The other day didn't start out so good. I had the largest battle with Elijah that I ever have, chock full of (him) screaming, crying uncontrollably, kicking, not listening, you know, all the key ingredients for a full fledged tantrum. Probably avoidable on my part, but hey I'm the parent, I have to be consistent and I ALWAYS WIN. ;) though I don't think you could have a winner in this particular contest. Anyway, all that to say post tantrum things got much better especially after nap time. Mom and Vicki sent Elijah monthly issues of Highlightsmagazine at Christmas and while Elijah was reading it on the potty before nap time we found a recipe for playdough. So after a good long slumber we got to the task of making playdough. Elijah had a ball and must have spent an hour playing with it, cutting out shapes (man I need to pull put more cookie cutters), patting down pancakes, squishing up. Thank goodness this day got better, because I was really wondering how things were going to go around 9 am...

Park Fun

Last Sunday dad took us put for brunch to celebrate a belated birthday for Lucas and me. We had a great meal as always at First Street Cafe and then we took the kids to the wooden park at the top of Forst street for some energy expelling. I think it was one of the longest park stays we have had, close to 1.5 hours!

Elijah is such a sweet kid. I can't tell if he is introverted or extroverted because he loved to play with the kids, but he also is totally content playing by himself. However he loves to play with mommy too, so I let "mike" (aka grandpa) hannout with Lucas while I took some quality time and played tag with Elijah. I think I registered 8k+ steps on my fit bit that day, which is saying a lot because I usually average about 5k!

Hope you enjoy these pictures!!

Baby Babbles

Here is a cute video of Lucas babbling and or mocking/ mimicking us. Enjoy!!!