Easter 2012- Our House

The Easter Bunny was good to us!  

Dan's favorite place the "hide" the candy.  

It's fun to get the toys involved too.  :)

The Easter Bunny came during Saturday Afternoon naps.  

Such excitement!

I'm sad I didn't get her saying, "Best Easter Ever!" on video. :)  

"Look guys!"

Digging in and reading their new Easter books.

Saturday evening, we had a lovely (and large) Easter dinner with my family.  McKenna was being really cooperative. :)  

I have to blog about this only because it's memorable, but it's also an embarrassing parenting FAIL.  We let Ben eat probably 5-6 FULL pieces of candy around 5pm.  He still ate a decent dinner, we did bath and bedtime at a normal time, and then Benny cried in his crib for 45+ minutes.  He had been teething the last few weeks so we thought he was in pain.  We gave in some Tylenol AND Ibuprofen and tried rocking him several times.  I was considering calling the pediatrician, but he had no other symptoms than a slight runny nose.  Finally, my mom suggested we bring him out to play for a little while to see if that would calm him down and it WORKED (thanks mom)!  He was perfectly happy to play with 5 adults for about 45 minutes or so and then went to bed without a single tear.  The more we thought about it, the more we realized he was probably just WIRED from all that sugar we had let him eat.  Nice work mom and dad.  Lesson learned.      

Easter 2012- Conference and Egg Dying

I forgot to post these pictures from General Conference weekend.  As soon as McKenna's Great-Grandfather appeared on the screen, she said, "Let's wave!"  :)  

*You'll note in many of the next few blog posts, you'll see blue paint tape, sample colors on the wall, and maybe even some plastic on the carpet.  Our house looked a little crazy for a few weeks.  Thankfully, it's mostly back to normal now.  

The Friday before Easter, we dyed Easter eggs.  (Don't mind the plastic Halloween table cloth.)

Mickelle always takes this very seriously.  :) 

McKenna likes making frowny faces for the camera lately.  

Benny saying good night.

Beauty!

Fun with Family Visitors

I mentioned before that my mom was in town visiting from Chile for a while.  She went to Alabama at the end of February to help my older sister who just had baby number 4!  And then my dad was coming to SLC for work mid April.  So it just made sense for her to stay in the states until my dad came out so they could fly back to Chile together.  We loved having her stay here!  My brother is also in between semesters at school and stayed with us almost the whole time too.  Between the two of them, we pretty much had live-in babysitters for about 6 weeks!  I know... feel sorry for us.  They were both SO incredibly helpful during that time while we were working on our home improvement projects and going to rehearsals for the Savior of the World play.  We really couldn't have done it all without them!  THANK YOU!!! xoxox

I think she enjoyed her stay with us too. :)  

Always fun to play on the iPad with Uncle Jonathan

Since the weather was starting to warm up while they were here too, there was lots of playing outside as well.  We got this awesome wagon (or "boat" as McKenna calls it) from our friends (thanks M family!).  The  kids could go for walks in it all. day. long! 

McKenna also loved playing with all of Grandma's fun things.  

And here are a couple extra cute shots of the Ben boy.  He's getting pretty good at maneuvering up AND down steps, especially this BIG step up on the hearth.  

The BIG step down is, at times, daunting.  :)

Ahh, kids are so easily entertained.  :)

Kids-Lately

Catching up on kids' pictures. Kind of a long post.  

BEN

Ben got a sucker at a library story time in February and was in heaven! Note: I would have never let McKenna do this when she was 13 months.  :) 

One of our park outings in March.  

Flipping these books off the table (with Grandma) was lots of fun! 

The point of this video was not to actually hear him say any of the words I'm asking him to say.  But this particular day, he made this cute face everytime I asked him to say something.  I also love how he stops to look for his shoes.  

This is just funny to me how fast he starts to shovel the food in his mouth (towards the end of this video).

Ben's 15 Month Stats

Height: 31 in (.5 in increase in 3 months) 40th percentile

Weight: 22.9 lbs (2.7 lb increase in 3 months) 25th percentile

New things about Ben lately:

• He loves the letters O and Q!  (In his hand in this picture are two letter "Os" from some ABC puzzles)

We find them all over the house too. :)

• Finally signing (daddy, warm, more, shoes, bath,...)
• Lots of pointing
• Loves shoes, baths, and being outside
• Teething like crazy (10 or 11 teeth total now)
• He could sit and have BOOKS read to him all. day. long!
• Might be starting to transition to one nap...Sigh.
• More and more attached to mommy these days
• Sometimes has a hard time eating.  He's more interested in playing with his food and reaching to play with everything on the table.  

MCKENNA
I took McKenna to get a hair trim at Cookie Cutter.  This is before.  

Unfortunately I didn't get much of an "after" picture because she wanted a braid.  She was super excited about the balloon and sucker she got for being so good.  

She got to help a bit with some of the trim painting during our home improvement projects.

And then continued to paint out in the garage.  Such a masterpiece!

She wrote on her arms one day because she told me she wanted to be like "Mulan."   

• McKenna also just completed a sticker chart for, among other things, brushing her teeth the "nice way."  I got to take her to the book store to choose some new books as a prize.  She surprised me and chose a Dora and a Smurfs book.  I thought for sure we'd expand our princess collection.    
• She's wearing her dress-up skirts less    
• Likes to changes her clothes at least once a day and is great at getting herself dressed in the mornings.  I've decided to let her flower print shirt with polka dot pants outfit slide. :)  
• Still takes a nap about 3 days a week 
• She said her first prayer in church during Jr. Primary Sharing Time.  She blessed, "Mommy, and Benny, and Primary."  Dan went up to help her, but he never said a word.  Such a sweet prayer! 

I LOVE MY KIDS!  

SPRING and the Zoo

We were lucky enough to have my mom in town visiting (from Chile) for the whole month of March!  On the first day of Spring, we planted some Forget-Me-Not seeds with McKenna so we can watch them grow. 

The first sprout is that tiny green speck. :)

Two little leaves.

The weather was so nice that we were able to go to the park 3 times before the end of March.

Ben, holding on for dear life on the teeter-totter. :) 

During one of our park visits, McKenna slipped while climbing up a ramp and got a fat lip.  Poor girl.

We did an Easter craft, courtesy of Grandma Kelly; a felt egg with stickers.  

 Also during March, we took a trip to the Zoo with some Webster cousins.  The tigers were SO close and active that day!  We even saw two of them FIGHTING and growling at each other!  

There was also one pacing back and forth over the bridge looking at all the small children, probably thinking--LUNCH! 

Riding the carousel is always a favorite! 

This was her "funny face."

Whit, Russie, and Kenna on the train.  Amazing all three are smiling!