Many Hands Make Easy Work. Or Not. It Depends on the Size of the Hand.

M "helped" me paint this weekend.

Outcome : We both survived, the walls are painted, most of the paint is off of us. I learned that M likes to play Tag but thinks that when she tags you, she is "It". She was "it" at lot.

Between Rain Drops

We've been having some "weather" here lately. That's not something we can normally say here in Nor Cal...
But between days of pouring rain and hail we've had some beautiful days. This weekend we decided to take advantage of the warm weather and visited our park. Naturally it was well populated and M had a great time.

Spinning with Dad

Making friends....

She's doing so well.... making things that used to be so hard (if not impossible) for her look easy now. It's amazing to us how fast she is growing and how strong she is getting.

We can't wait to see what the next year has in store for her and what kind of big sister she'll be!

There's no App for that.

Lies. All Lies.

Easter!

It's that time again... the time in spring where parents walk the fine line between scarring their children for life and you know, celebrating a holiday.  In the past we've kept Easter pretty low key, but we had some aspirations this year. To be honest I wasn't really sure how this year would turn out, but the answer came out to be: AWESOME. 

On Saturday we participated in our gym's annual egg hunt. The grounds of the gym are divided into about 5 roped off areas, one for each age group. Last year M sandbagged the 1-4 year old category - it was just the tennis courts with eggs everywhere so it was pretty easy.

 This year she moved into the 5-6 year old category which was the play structure and surrounding grass with less obvious eggs (and more aggressive kids). 

The hardest part was waiting for the signal to go. 

During the excruciating (..10 minute) wait, M spotted the Easter Bunny making the rounds. She was sooo excited we couldn't believe it. She asked if she could hug him....

Evidently she's not traumatized by huge anthropomorphized animals.
 Unintentional Crisis averted.

M was able to find just enough eggs to make it fun, 

but not so many that we risked an OD on candy (second 

crisis overted). 

The morning was rounded out with some old fashioned monkey business.

 

 On Sunday the real festivities began. Instead of just having the "Easter Bunny" leave a basket, we wanted to set up a scavenger hunt where M could follow clues and eventually find her basket. We didn't really know how it would go over... would she understand the clues? Would she get through all of them or would she give up?  

It was time to toe that fine line...

We met M in her room and I told her that the Easter Bunny had stopped by and left something for her, and I handed her a little Dora the Explorer pail which had a plastic egg in it. She immediately turned to her dad (sitting right next to her) and said "The Easter Bunny stopped by and left this for me!", like he hadn't just heard it. She was so happy it felt like we just gave her a pony...

 We told her to look at what was inside the egg and she told us it was a picture of a refrigerator (our refrigerator, and her first stop on the hunt). Each clue led to a another another egg with a clue inside and a treat, but after the first one she didn't care too much for the treats, she just wanted to find the clues! We had to encourage her to go find the fridge, but when she got going she was on a rampage! I caught video of clues 3-5 with my phone, sorry for the sound - it gets really quiet a few times. 

It went about as wonderfully as we could have hoped and it was a great way to start the morning.

A little while later Grandma Nancy and Papa Donny came over, then the Buffington Clan. With the beautiful weather we had an egg hunt outside.

That is M's "OH MY GOSH!" face, at the sight of a "hidden" egg

Looking near and far ....

Even Baby Reno (er..Emmett) was on the hunt!
M might have some competition next year!

 Then it was back inside for an excellent brunch!

Easter Baskets and bellies full we asked M if she wanted to watch her new movie (Tangled, the Disney Rapunzel move). It's the first movie we've ever bought her, or attempted to watch with her at home, but the day was going so well we thought we might actually get through a movie. 

And we did. 

Later that day, after her nap, she asked me if we could "play Tangled?", like it was a game. 

"How do you play Tangled?", I asked her.

"We brush hair!" she answered. 

I said yes, absolutely we could "play Tangled".

Disney couldn't have written a better ending!