This is a great time of year. Lots of stuff happens. There's Spring, and our anniversary, and Easter and a bunch of birthdays! Ryan and I celebrated eight years together on Tuesday and it was such a great night. We had a ton of fun but we normally do!


This weekend we celebrated Easter! I love Easter. Ahhh, who am I kidding... I love most holidays. But I really get into Easter. The year we got married was really close to Easter and when we returned from our honeymoon I actually made Ryan color eggs with me. Then (***CHILDREN DO NOT READ THIS SENTENCE***) we split them up and hid them for each other. Poor guy, he didn't have a clue what he had gotten into! This year, we had a beautiful weekend. We colored the eggs outside on Saturday after the kids naps. It was good that we did it outside because Olivia got a little overzealous with the dye and Cooper REALLY got into putting sparkles on the eggs! Clean up was really easy though and the color came off my hands by the end of the day today, mostly. Cooper was really involved this year and all day yesterday he was talking about the egg search and how the Easter Bunny was coming to hide the eggs. This morning before it was time to get up we heard him yell 'Mama/Dadda I need to go potty' and then run to the bathroom. A few minutes later I saw him come out of the bathroom and run right back to bed. He didn't even look at the top of the stairs to see if anyone was down there watching him. It was like he knew he had to wait until we got up to get him. The egg hunt itself lasted a very short period of time, but that's what you get when there are only 13 eggs. The bunny hid a few plastic eggs as well that he made sure were easier for Olivia to find. In her search for the eggs, she did accidentally step on one... it was still good!


We had some family and friends over for an Easter brunch. I forgot to take any pictures of course, but Ryan got one great picture of the new baby in the family, Knox. He was perfect the whole time the Dolans were with us. Olivia got really into the egg hunt once we were inside. I kept picking up the plastic eggs and putting pennies in them and then re-hiding them around the house for her to find. She kept finding them and would scream in delight at how exciting it all was. She would then pile them up wherever I was and look at me like 'we're gonna keep doing this right?' It was adorable so I took a video. It literally lasted until she went to bed tonight. She got some pretty awesome sunglasses in her easter basket. She loves playing with Cooper's sunglasses and putting them on so it made sense that she got her own pair. They have made it through an entire day without getting broken by her, so we call that a success. 


My only problem with Easter is the amount of candy I have to eat... I mean, what if the pastel colored pretzel M&M's taste different than the regular ones and what if the egg shaped Reese's Pieces pale in comparison to the original ones? I would need to be able to tell people about it and warn them away if necessary. Luckily, I'm always willing to take one for the team. 


Hope everyone had a great weekend! Happy Easter!


~Ahna

Sweet Readers (all 9 of you, HA!)... it's been awhile. It's not that we've been too busy. We've been up to lots of things. Cooper went ice skating sat on the ice with his preschool. Olivia started dance class where she mostly wants to be held, which is of course the opposite of when she's at home. We had friends and family come to visit. Olivia wore pigtails for the first time, it lasted at least 2 minutes. We celebrated Valentine's Day, we lost a portion of a tooth, we had a birthday. We had snow, we had sun! We had a beautiful winter. What's that you say... you want to hear about the broken tooth? So do we, but she can't talk yet. We didn't even take our eyes off of Olivia. We were in the same room, the same five foot vicinity, the same breathing space, and somehow Olivia broke a portion of her tooth. We may start calling her 'Snaggletooth' but we're not sure yet how that might affect her in the future.

A couple weekends ago Ryan and I went up to the mountain for our first snowboarding trip since we lived here. Only it was less of a snowboarding trip and more of a really long drive to the snow. It was blowing forty mile per hour winds and for a good portion of our drive up the mountain we couldn't see anything. I really love snowboarding, but I don't enjoy paying money to spend my whole day miserable due to wind and vertigo like conditions. Ryan, being the good man he is just drove back down the mountain. We stopped for some pictures which didn't really make up for it.

For my birthday last weekend, I got to hang out with the family. We had great food all weekend. We took some good walks around the neighborhood and we got to go on a great hike. It was almost two miles and Cooper did the whole thing by himself. It was an awesome weekend. On our walk to get ice cream on Sunday night, we were both saying what a perfect weekend it was. There is an ice cream place by our house that mixes the craziest flavors together, one that comes to mind is pear and blue cheese. They have some more normal ones (things like caramel, etc) so I can appreciate the place as well. The one I tried on Sunday night? It was a rainbow sherbet, invented by a local second grade class. I tried it because the rainbow of flavors was that of my favorite candy... Skittles... TASTE THE RAINBOW. Ya, it was good.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the last few months.

I'll try not to stay away so long next time.

~Ahna

Well, it seems as though the holidays went too fast again this year. We had a Christmas tree hunt after we returned from Thanksgiving to get it started. The kids were great on our hunt and Santa was there as well. Cooper mostly just wanted to point and smile at him though, he didn't actually get close to him! 


We took lots of walks to the park and Cooper went on his first boat trip down the river on a field trip with preschool (Dada got to go with him and take pictures)! We also took advantage of a twofer at Zoolights (2 for 1 tickets). It was so much fun to take the kids out and have them see all the lights. We even got to see the big elephant!


We spent Christmas Eve with some family, Billy and Brynne and their daughter Claude. We had a delicious turkey and all the good stuff that goes with it. The kids got to play and it was a good way to spend our time waiting for Santa to get here! After getting the kids to sleep, Ryan and I drank hot chocolate and watched Elf which I'm thinking is the beginning of a new and incredible Christmas tradition! I love that movie, it always makes me laugh. I was so excited for Christmas morning I could barely stand it. The kids got all kinds of fun books and new clothes and building blocks. Cooper got TONS of hotwheels from Santa which is pretty much all he wanted (those and a plane but luckily Santa was able to sneak in some matchbox planes!). Olivia got this awesome little walker/pusher thing. She doesn't need help walking but she ABSOLUTELY loves to sit in something and have her brother push her around. She also likes pushing it around while there are things in it. She sometimes likes falling out of it too, just depends on her mood! Santa brought Ryan a bunch of fun stuff for brewing beer as well as some other goodies and I got an awesome new camera!! I'd been wanting a point and shoot for awhile so we have a smaller camera to take with us on quick trips to the park and it is such a cool one! I've been using it almost everyday! 


We hung out all day mostly in our pajamas (cause why would we need to get dressed on Christmas?). We had a great dinner that night, which almost made up for my epic failure of a pull apart (note to self... frozen bread rolls that have been in the freezer for over a year are definitely not still good). 


The next day, Nonna and Papa came to visit and we had another Christmas! The kids always enjoy having Nonna and Papa around and Ryan and I take advantage by going out on dates. We went to an early dinner on New Years Eve and ended up ringing in the actual new year with my parents! I don't remember when I've last made it until midnight... so pathetic. 


The weather here has been gorgeous and we have been taking advantage of it as much as possible with trips to the park and just spending time outside. In Olivia news... she is oddly fantastic at blowing her nose, something that I think is a definite skill to have. I remember being in the third grade and having my teacher try to explain to all of us the 'proper way' to blow our noses (she was a bit off though, right Colette?? :) ). She is also really excited to test out the strength of her head and she does so by falling on her face as often as possible. As soon as we get one scratch or bruise all healed up, she makes sure to put a mark on some other part of her face! 


Happy New Year everybody!! Here's to a wonderful and healthy 2012!


~ Ahna and Ryan