Easter

This Easter we had the pleasure of having my dad, grandma, and my two sisters, Melissa and Katelyn visiting us. We had such a great time talking, laughing, and playing with Clara and Tyler. And we had a lot of fun Easter Day! I have since learned that it would have been a good idea to split the fun stuff from the religious stuff into two separate days, but you live you learn. It sure was fun to do the fun stuff with Tyler though. We planned a scavenger hunt for his basket and he rode his bike all over the house trying to find it.  

Tyler got a pair of safety scissors for Easter.... what was that Easter Bunny thinking?

Clara sure liked the stickers!

Tyler was kind enough to share his stickers with everyone.

Including Clara

Clara trying to make an escape from the sticker monster

Clara got stickered!

This is the lovely face you get when you ask Tyler to say "cheese!"

And after church I tried to get some pictures of my adorable children in their matching Easter outfits. Alas they just won't look at the camera at the same time or even smile on cue. What kind of models are they?

Still pretty dang cute!

This is what you get when you have to go to church early to play the piano and daddy is in charge of combing Tyler's hair: a faux hawk....good thing Tyler can pull it off like a champ!

Ewww...Don't let the grass touch my leg!

My pretty girl!

And finally, to close out the day we had our Easter egg hunt - in the dark. One of the many reasons splitting up the Easter festivities is a good idea. 

Papa and Tyler reaching an egg the Easter bunny put way up high.

I just realized this looks like a real egg, but it's not, it's plastic.

Clara with Aunt Sissa 

Tyler with Aunt Cake

Somewhere in the midst of all of that we made a delicious Easter dinner, devoured that, went to church, and watched the "He is Risen" and other bible videos on lds.org. Tyler didn't quite get the concept of resurrection and the Atonement, but I'll tell you it was very sweet and cute to hear his little voice say, "uh oh Jesus!" when Jesus was hurting in the garden and when the bad men came to take him away. At least I know he was watching and paying attention. And when Jesus showed Himself to Mary we told him that Jesus was alive and tried to teach him the word resurrection. Next year I think he'll be able to understand a lot more. I can't wait to teach him all about His Savior and everything He did for us! How grateful we are that because He died for us we can return to live with our Heavenly Father again. And that we can be forgiven of all our sins and lifted and succored through all our trials through the Atonement! All in all it was a great day and we had lots of fun with all our family!

This and That

I've done it again. I'm behind. *sigh* The good news is there isn't really much to catch up on. Let's see we've played, cleaned, ate, bathed, slept, etc. But have had a great time doing it all! How can you not have fun when you have these little people to be with all day? Well ok, there are times that aren't fun, but luckily most times are. 

Like this time. We were cleaning up Tyler's room and before I threw his empty diaper box in the recycling I had a genius idea - make it into a car! I know, no one has ever thought of that before...  But Tyler thought it was good fun to pick out the colors and help me tape it all on. He played with that thing for days, walking around the house, running into my legs, saying "beep beep!" 

Or this time. Why do babies look so cute in oversized hats and sunglasses? Too bad I didn't get a picture of the oversized sunglasses. My camera is just not fast enough.

 When you can't wear 'em, eat 'em. 

Or this time. Tyler loves making faces and taking pictures on photobooth. What did parent's do before computers? I guess they had to be creative or something.

Or all the times we spent playing in the playroom. Clara has changed so much in the past month! I should probably do a 10 month post to follow up the 9 month post. She's had a developmental explosion! She can crawl, pull to a stand, cruise, wave and say bye (sounds more like "buh"), says mama or mom, she eats almost all finger foods (she really doesn't like being fed anymore - she wants to do it herself. Already so independent, heaven help me), still wakes up 3 times a night (UGH), plays so nicely by herself, loves to explore all our cabinets, pull everything out of said cabinets, and is just the cutest little bug in the world!

 Enjoying her play table! Especially now that she can do it herself!

 Nothing's safe now!

Clara loves to play with her big beach ball. She gets VERY excited!

Tyler plays with us too! He went through a brief monster truck stage and had great times playing monster truck with his cars. We even learned a Mighty, Mighty Monster Truck song from the show "All About Monster Trucks." The end of this video may need some explaining. A long time ago Tyler and I began a random "I love you" bedtime routine. It's simple and kind of silly, but Tyler won't go to sleep without saying it and I look forward to it. Now if he helps me put Clara down for a nap or something he'll do it to her which is so stinkin' sweet and cute I kind of want to die. Anyway, I got it on video for memory sake, because unfortunately I highly doubt he'll want to do it with me when he's a teenager. 

One day I was doing the dishes while Clara explored the cabinets. I was singing a song about 10 octaves too high just for fun. What? You don't randomly sing songs as high as possible? Hmmm..weird. When all of a sudden I heard Clara singing along. I thought it was pretty cute so I busted out the camera and tried to get it on video. A little embarrassing for me, but cute for Clara.