Feeding the Birds

One of Hannah's favorite things to do is to "feed the birds." She notices every time the birdfeeder gets empty and will stand at the back door and point and say "Daddy - FEED BIRDS!" It is so funny.

What's even funnier is the fact that my Grandma Catney also used to love to feed the birds. She had multiple feeders and there were always tons of birds around. Apparently, Hannah got some of that gene....Jon is just trying to make sure that we don't end up with a 40-gallon trashcan of birdseed in our garage like my grandma used to have!

Hannah loves to help her Daddy
She wants to make sure the birds are well fed.

Daddy finishes off the job.

Easter Egg Hunt & Dinner

Since we were hosting Easter Dinner for family and friends and I knew we'd have three little kids at the house, I thought an Easter Egg Hunt would be fun. My Grandma Catney used to have the best Easter Egg Hunts at her house. She hid what seemed to be hundreds of plastic eggs....when we were little I'm sure there was only candy in them, but to lure "too cool" middle and high school aged kids into participating, she added money when we got older. That did the trick! As I was filling the eggs a few nights beforehand Jon and I were talking a lot about Grandma - unfortunately, by the time he came around the egg hunts had ended, so he never got to experience one.

Grandma was also a really good hider of the eggs - they'd be in between trash bags and the liners, hidden inside plants, under cushions...she was good. One Easter I brought my college roommate, Sonika, to dinner. Sonika hadn't ever participated in an Easter Egg Hunt before and was a little overwhelmed when the 5 grandkids gathered in the laundry room while Grandma handed out our plastic bags to go get the hidden eggs. She couldn't understand why we (as college and high-school kids) were still doing this. I think Sonika found one (of the 90+ eggs), after Grandma helped her. She just stood in the yard looking at us like we were crazy. Truthfully, we probably were, but it was still fun!

With an Easter Egg Hunt consisting of 3 kids that were all 2 and under, we were going with a "hidden in plain sight" theme....the eggs were just out in the yard in mulch. In fact, Curtis actually went out and hid them while we were waiting for Jon's side of the family to arrive. However, he let Hannah and Jake watch out the window while he was putting the eggs outside, so we had a hard time telling them that they had to wait for Gavin to arrive!

Unfortunately, Gavin wasn't able to come over because he ended up staying home to take his afternoon nap (and Ryan stayed with him), so as soon as Rachel showed up and told us that Gavin wasn't coming we went ahead and let Hannah and Jake round up the eggs. Jacob knew just what to do and was out gathering eggs in no time. Hannah didn't want to be barefoot...then just wanted the one egg that she found first....especially after Daddy showed her there was candy inside...

Enjoy the pictures!

Jacob enjoyed himself!
Hannah found her first egg

She walked around so cautiously looking for eggs
Found one!

Daddy shows her the candy inside...

Yummy!

"Here's my egg!"

While I wrapped up the meal Curtis and Jake played on the swingset a bit. Thank goodness we're able to "toss" the kids outside while we finish getting things ready!

Ah, dinner table is all set!

We set up a table in another room for a buffet line, which really helps the table be less crowded when it's set for 8-10 people! We had a good meal, but people had to leave pretty quickly to get kids down for naps and that kind of thing. At least we were able to gather with family and friends.

Easter Morning

Happy Easter!!! He is Risen!

We started our Easter Sunday off really early this year. You see, our church has two services for Easter- one at 8:30, followed by an all-church breakfast, and the other is at 10:30 (so you would hit breakfast first). Since we were serving Easter dinner at our house between 12-12:30 (we have to do it early b/c of kids' nap times), we knew we had to hit the first service in order to have all of the food ready in time. It certainly wasn't easy to get all of us dressed and out the door in time, that is for sure!

Hannah loves to sleep in on weekends (probably because we wake her at 6:30am during the week!), so she's hard to get up...but I also wanted to take pictures, and she had to get her basket from the Easter Bunny....so it made for a frantic morning. Let's just say that we arrived a tad late for church.

Hannah in her Easter Dress
(there is a matching bonnet, but it looked really funny)
This girl can't stand still : )
The first thing she grabbed for was her "SpongeBob" bubble maker

I've got my basket and I'm ready to go!


Mom, did you realize there were JELLY BEANS in here?!?!

And, the candy has been discovered...

It was a ton of fun to watch Hannah get into her basket. She got her bubble maker, a book, some socks, new sunglasses, a Dora video, and of course....some candy. We did have to pry her away from the candy to leave the house, but when she got home she wanted to play bubbles outside more than the wanted the candy, so at least that is good!

Coloring Eggs

I took off Jon's "spring break" week (well, except for Monday) so I could spend the week with Jon and Hannah. We went to storytime, went to the zoo, played at the park, and just had a great week together -- I'm so glad I'm able to take time off when they are home. Plus, it was nice to allow Jon's break to be a little more of a "break" without being on Hannah duty full-time. He was able to get a lot of things done that he wanted to do...and I got to play full-time Mom for a few weekdays.

We went to Pittsburgh on Thursday to spend a few days with Josh and Danila. During our time off I wanted to color eggs and make Easter cookies with Hannah. I never quite got around to the cookies (I was pretty ambitious for just having a few days off), but Danila wanted to dye eggs too....so we were able to do it at their house.

We got so many great pictures, I had a hard time picking which ones to post. Enjoy!!

Hannah isn't quite sure what is going on with these bowls....but she is examining her "boo-boos"....which is something she does every time her shirt comes off.

Check out her wild morning hair (we call it "crazy hair")!

Hannah is ready to drop her first egg

Hannah was really interested in the measuring spoons.

But once we got out the egg separator, she was really into it!
She figured out how to maneuver by herself

Hannah the pro!

Not all of the eggs made it out without cracks....
Our finished product!

We used sponges on some of them to make neat designs. Aunt D and Hannah with her basket of eggs

(gotta love the artsy shot mom was trying)

Hannah wanted to smell the egg

My grown-up girl!
Some eggs did end up on the sidewalk as we were taking these pictures....

Hannah inspecting her eggs

Miss Hannah - my girl

Pancakes

Hannah making pancakes with Aunt D.....This girl loves pancakes - she ate 3 of them after helping make them....she absolutely LOVES to help out in the kitchen.