The weekend is here!

Yay!! It's the weekend! This week seemed to go on forever! We are starting to feel better finally, so we will actually be able to enjoy the weekend. Laura will be getting here around noon to spend the weekend with us. She was going to come last weekend, but with everyone sick, she postponed it until this weekend.

Here are a couple of pictures from this week:

Alaina was showing Leo how to play with his toy.
Yesterday Alaina put her chair up on the couch, grabbed a blanket, her baby, and bear and snuggled up to watch a movie. She even put a pillow on her chair to make it more comfortable. She actually did it all by herself. I was impressed.

I'll post more pictures later of the kids with Laura. Hope you all have a good weekend!

Dyeing Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter Eggs tonight. I bought the stuff to do it last year and finally got around to dying Easter Eggs with Alaina tonight. We almost missed it again this year. Anyway, here are the pictures:

Alaina was putting the dye pellets into the water and watching them fizz up:
It takes forever for the yellow ones to dye!!
Pulling out the first egg!

Dropping in an egg...and spilling!!
Trying really hard to get the egg out by herself:
Much easier this way!!
She got them all out and put them in the tray by herself.

She did a really good job this year. I was impressed. After she finished dyeing the eggs, she went up for a bath. Afterwards she put stickers on all of them. As of right now (at 9:30pm) she is asleep in a sugar coma upstairs. I don't think she has ever had so much sugar in one day! Overall it was a pretty good Easter. Hope yours was the same!

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter everyone!! I hope that you all are having a wonderful day! We have had a pretty good Easter weekend overall. We are still a little bit sick, but we were still able to get out for a little bit to go on the Killeen City Easter Egg Hunt. It was 74 degrees and sunny, so it was a perfect day for it. It was packed, so she only got 4 eggs, as opposed to last year when it was snowing and we left after we had at least 50 eggs and there were still more out there. She had fun regardless. She also got to meet the Easter Bunny, which she hated. She was perfectly happy waving at him from the safty of her stroller, but when Daddy brought her over to have her picture taken with him, she freaked out. Leo did much better. He slept through it all which made for a great picture.

Today we still had a cough and the sniffles, so we didn't get to church this morning. We did however get to find our easter baskets and eggs hidden all over the living room. Alaina had a blast finding her eggs as well as the baskets for her, Leo, and Dave.

Here are the pictures from the weekend:
Wow, she looks terrified!
Picture perfect posing with the Easter Bunny.
Alaina got much happier when we left the Easter Bunny and collected eggs. Here she is putting them in the basket Daddy was holding for her.
Here she is picking up her last egg.

Here are the pictures from this morning:
Wow! Check out that bed head!

It took her a good five minutes to start looking for the other baskets and the eggs after finding her basket.
Here she is with an egg.
She was checking these to by shaking them to see if they had any candy in them. If she didn't hear anything she would throw them on the ground and move on.
She spread out all of the grass in her easter basket all over the living room, opened up her chocolate bunny, ate off the ears and head, and left the rest of it on the floor.
I made the mistake of assuming that since Alaina had asked us to open up any piece of candy for her, that she could not open it by herself. Based upon that assumption, I left her unattended, with her basket, filled with candy, in the living room. After about 5 minutes I realized that she was being way too quiet. All of us Moms know what that means. I found her on the end table between the couch and the wall with at least 5 KitKat bars demolished. I guess they were only half demolished because she chewed on the rapper to make a hole and then chewed some more until the candy bar would squirt out of the hole. Each bar was only about halfway gone. Being the good Mom I am, instead of stopping her, I grabbed the camera. The mess was already made so might as well document it....

If all goes as planned, we will dye Easter Eggs tonight. I'm not sure what we are doing for dinner tonight and it is 5:11, so I need to go work on that. Happy Easter everyone!

We have a thumb sucker!!

I am so excited!! Leo has actually started to suck his thumb on a regular basis. I know most Mom's don't want their kids to suck their thumbs, but I really really like the idea of him being able to soothe himself. Most nights I wake up to the sound of him sucking on his thumb instead of him crying. In fact, he has only cried 2 times in the middle of the night since he was born. He has now started to suck on his thumb or fist during the day too. This evening he spent most of the night with his thumb in his mouth.


While I was making dinner, I had Leo on the counter "helping" me. He is pretty content in his bouncy chair while I work in the kitchen. Maybe someday he will like cooking as much as I do. Anyway, Dave came in and started bouncing him. They laughed together for a good 5 minutes in the kitchen until Dave took him into the living room so that Alaina could play along.

Right before Alaina went to bed she kept on asking for candy. We just taught her the sign for candy and so I took a picture of her signing it. I gave her part of a reeces penut butter egg. I figure that is a good excuse for me to eat the other half, right??

I was going through my internal memory on my camera and I came across this picture of Betsy using my kitchen mitts as puppets. I'd like to say it was for Alaina's entertainment, but I think she was in bed at the time...

I just found out that Laura and Josh are going to be coming up here this weekend! It will be awesome to spend Easter with family. They will be here from Saturday morning until Sunday night. Also, I found out today that Dave has off tomorrow for Good Friday. What a great day!

Alaina has been doing a little better today. She was crabby on and off and may have had a low grade fever, but we managed to get through the day with no Tylenol or Motrin. Her eyes were a little bit goopy. Hopefully she will wake up feeling better tomorrow. So far Leo has shown no signs of catching it. It would be awesome if the rest of us could avoid it.

Time for bed. Night everyone.

Baby Blues

Well, I guess more of navy blues. I cannot believe how blue Leo's eyes are. They are so dark blue it is amazing. You can see it in the bottom 2 pictures, but they are even more blue in person.

The last couple of days have been pretty hecktic. It all started when we pulled into the airport on Monday when we were dropping off Betsy. Alaina threw up all over. It was one of the longest drives home ever. It normally takes about an hour and it took us over 3. Between stopping to clean up several times and a trip to Wal-Mart to buy more clothes, a blanket, Tylenol, and Pedialite it was not fun. She is doing ok now. She has her moments when she is doing better and then she starts feeling worse. Hopefully it will get better soon. Luckly, Leo hasn't caught anything but a stuffy nose.

We have spent most of the last couple of days hanging out around the house. Alaina and Leo have been playing together and having fun (when Alaina's not feeling crummy on the couch).

Here is a picture of Alaina and Bandit sitting on the arm of the couch. This is one of their favorite spots to cuddle.

Alaina was playing with Leo on the floor and Bandit was trying to join in. It is really cute how nurturing she is to him. She really is a little Mama to him! He was so happy to be on the floor! He was smiling away while playing with Alaina.
Here are the baby (or navy) blues I was talking about. I hope that his eyes stay this blue! Alaina's used to be this blue but have gotten a little bit of green in them. They turn really green when she gets mad.

Alaina just crawled on my lap and it is hard to type and cuddle at the same time, so I guess it is time for me to leave blogland. Hope you are all having a great week!

Bye, Bye, Betsy....

So here are the last of the pictures taken while Betsy was here. As much as I enjoyed having her here, it is a good thing she left on Monday as opposed to yesterday. I guess half of the flights out of Dallas were canceled yesterday and that is where Betsy had her layover. Anyway, here are the last of the pictures from Betsy's visit:


Leo and Alaina were dancing the night away.
Alaina watchin' toons in Leo's carseat.
Betsy hangin' with everyone the night before she left.

I love you Dave!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! No we aren't even a little bit Irish, but we are pretending today... Hope you all have a fun day!

Fun fact for the day, if redheads don't start procreating at a greater rate, they will be extinct in 100 years.

The Races

Tonight we took Betsy to the races. We have this awesome dirt racetrack about 1 mile away from our house. They have races every Saturday night. Alaina had a blast. I think her favorite part was that it started at 8pm...her bedtime. We just got home and it is time for me to go to bed, so here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone from the race:

Just a picture of the racetrack.
Leo with his ear protection. He only put up with wearing it for about the first 5 minutes.

Last but not least

We went to the Dr Pepper Museum on the way home from the zoo. We pass by the museum every time that we go to the zoo. I wanted to make sure that we got there before we moved because Waco is the birthplace of Dr Pepper. And hey, now we can say that we went to the Dr Pepper Museum. The kids (and Betsy) even got t-shirts to show for it.

Leo hangin' out with Bandit after we got home in his new t-shirt.

In case you were wondering....

why there weren't any pictures of Leo with the animals, this is why. He spent the whole time sleeping.
This was Alaina's favorite "kitty":
And this is what a giraffe looks like drinking:

The Zoo!

Today Betsy, Alaina, Leo, and I went to the Zoo. Alaina loves the animals and the Zoo is one of Betsy's favorite places. (You can't get her to go to the beach to save your life, but she loves the zoo....I don't get it...) Anyhow, we went and saw the lions, tigers, and bears (Oh My!). Alaina is getting a lot better at naming her animals. Given a lion is still called a "Roar" and the tigers and jagars are called "kitties" but she is getting the basics. I think her favorites were the big cats and the fish this time.

The monkeys!
Fish!
I love the water tanks here with the big animals!

Bears..Oh My!
Here she is at her favorite spot!
Under a waterfall.
Teepee time!
Looks like dinner!

Just walking along...
I can just hear my Mom now..."Betsy, get your hair out of your face!!"
I have never seen a giraffe bend over this far!

2 heads and 3 butts...The rhinos wouldn't turn around!
Flamingos!
This is how she walked for the last 50 feet.
Walking around.
Veggin' out and taking a rest. She walked the whole time! I can't believe she didn't use her stroller.