Monday, April 13, 2009

Easter

Easter seemed to creep up on me this year. I didn't decorate our house one bit and didn't plan too far ahead on much. Thankfully Nathan and Natalie have a wonderful great grandma and grandpa that bought their Easter clothes in advance and gave them to us the week before.  I think part of not being prepared is due to having a small child. I'm talking about Nathan not Natalie. But let's take for example the Easter egg hunt at the park. We didn't even tell him we were going until five minutes before we left. I mean can you imagine the disappointment if it had been canceled due to rain or we didn't make it for some other reason. And although he asked about Easter for several weeks leading up to it, it seemed easier to convey the length of time by not making too big a deal (ie decorations). Which is very selfish of me.  This year I really tried to get Nathan to understand why we celebrate Easter. After all it is so much more than easter egg hunts and candy.  I would actually like to know how a bunny came to represent easter and if a bunny then why eggs?  All of it is a bit of a mystery to me. So explaining the connection to Nathan was not my strong point. But I do think he could tell you a little more about the meaning of Easter, so for that I am grateful.  I am posting some pictures of the things we actually ended up doing to celebrate.


The pictures above are from the Easter egg hunt at the park (in the rain)
Coloring Eggs

Easter morning.

Easter dinner at Grandma's

This is the house Ryan bought to turn into a salon this past winter. He has done an amazing job. The girls started at the beginning of this month and I think it is going well. He still has some work to do on the outside and now that spring is here hopefully he will be able to.  I am including some pictures of the inside now that that is finished. I seriously am amazed that he is able to do so many things.







Nathan and Natalie's handprints in the cement outside the salon.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

6 Months Old







We started Natalie on rice cereal this week. She did pretty well for her first time. You can see from the pictures she enjoyed it more sometimes than others. I can't believe she is already six months old. Those six months went fast.

Baseball and Soccer








I'm not sure what we were thinking but we signed Nathan up for both baseball and soccer this spring. Last Saturday would have been the first day for games in both baseball and soccer but due to the snow both were canceled. So Nathan had his first baseball game on Monday night and first soccer game Thursday night.  Ryan is Nathan's baseball coach and this year they are playing coach pitch. It's been fun going to practices and games so far. I'm sure we will get our fair share of both but Nathan loves playing both so I guess it's okay. Lucky he is the only one we have to worry about as far as sports and extracurricular activities go. Thursday before his soccer game he was kicking a flat kick ball on the asphalt and slipped. I think it was banana peel style. He cracked his head on the asphalt and it started to bleed and gave him a pretty good goose egg.  The thing that made him the most sad was hearing he might not be able to play in his soccer game. We help him out the first half and then let him play in the second half. The bleeding stopped and he was just left with a sore head. Poor guy. Natalie gets bundled up pretty good for the games and practices. Here she is in her warm pink fuzzy outfit. She stays nice and warm with this.

The Aquarium

Natalie is sitting pretty well as long as there is something behind her.
She continues to be a very happy content baby.
We went to the aquarium recently with Grandma Wagstaff during a rainy day. They have a whole new exhibit with some fun animals. There are these bright colored poisonous frogs.  There are also large spiders, a large snake, crocodiles, turtles, piranas, eels, and soon to be penguins.

The fish in this tank were huge!

Nathan always enjoys putting the puzzle numbers together. He is getting quite good with puzzles. We are glad to have annual passes to the aquarium and enjoy going often to see what's new and also to see our favorite marine life.