First and Third Easter

This year was Emily's first and Kylie's third Easter. It's true what they say, holidays are much more fun when you have little ones to enjoy them with. Kylie loved painting Easter eggs and Emily loved finding them.

We ended up waiting to paint our eggs until Easter morning and to minimize the mess (and the likelihood of mommy having a heart attack), we opted for painting with dye-filled q-tips instead of the traditional cups of dye. (I highly recommend the tips.) It was fun watching Kylie concentrating so hard while she painted with her little tongue sticking out. She is quite the little artist. And Emily was going nuts watching her big sis and playing with her own little plastic eggs.

(I never know where to put the explanation on each photo, so in this post it comes before each photo)

So excited!

Yes, we photographed and recorded the whole egg painting experience. overboard? perhaps.

I think this was either her kissy face or her smile with her lips closed. We'll keep working on it.

These little plastic eggs kept Emily entertained for about a week straight.

Such concentration. That little tongue cracks me up!

Emily sharing her beautiful egg.

The masterpieces. I bet you can't guess who painted which ones. Hint: Ky painted four and mommy and daddy each painted two.

When we were all finished, Daddy gave Ky the roll of paper towels so she could help clean up. She preferred using them to play peek-a-boo with her baby sister.

Since we painted eggs in the morning we asked the Easter Bunny if he could come by during nap time to help us hide some eggs and treats for the girls. Emily got into the Easter Bunny's stash before he could hide them all. We learned that she really likes goldfish crackers...

Easter goodies for the girls. It's always so fun seeing the expression of Kylie's face when she walks out into the living room to find surprises like this.

After exploring the basket and trying to sneak some candy, Kylie spotted the first of the hidden eggs and raced around the room gathering as many as she could.

Emily found a few of her own.

Kylie got her very own Rapunzel doll from Mimi for Easter. She loooooooves it. I just wish her hair wouldn't get "tangled" quite so easily (pun intended). 

And finally, showing off her basket full of eggs. I can't wait until next year when both girls will be racing around finding eggs (and I'm sure fighting over some of them).

Reading her new books. I love that she loves to read.

I love putting up little decorations during each of the holidays. Here are just a few of our cute little Spring decorations.

The mantle:

The egg banner made from paint samples, Annalee chicks from my Inky Grandma, and there should be tulips there too but they died by the time I got around to taking a picture and I really didn't want to take the girls out in the rain just to get some more for a picture. So use your imagination :)

Cute little Annalee bunnies. I grew up with Annalee dolls and they always give me warm fuzzies when I see them because they remind me of my childhood and traditions. Isn't it fun how silly little dolls can bring such a smile to your face when they have those memories attached?

I've been slowly redecorating every room in our house over the last few months. I just felt like taking a picture of a few of our new cute pillows. I think they are fun, bright and even Springy, and I love them. I made the yellow ruffle one (and two others that aren't pictured). 

I will have to do a post on our cute house soon, mostly so I have a record of how cute our house was before we have to downsize and become poor college students again.

Happy First and Third Easter!

Read more...

Tornado Warnings

When we moved to Arkansas 3 years ago I knew we were moving into "Tornado Alley," but it wasn't until this year that I really began to understand exactly how much that might affect us. 2011 has already gone down as a year with one of the highest tornado counts in the US in history, especially in the south.

Our local news station is always issuing "severe thunderstorm" alerts (oooh, scary... who cares about a little rain?), and warn that it could produce golf ball sized hail (okay, you have my attention...) and then, just recently, I learned that big hail means there's a possibility of tornadoes in the area.

Last week they issued a severe thunderstorm warning along with a tornado warning. It sounds scary but since we've been here there have been many of these "warnings" and nothing has ever happened so I just shrugged it off. Then, around 7pm, all of the regularly schedule programming was interrupted by the local weatherman giving us an update on the storm. This is what we saw:

See that purple area? That's where we live... And then they switched to live view where their weather cameras had spotted a funnel cloud starting to form and come down toward the earth. As I watched all of this unfolding on TV, I was nervous, scared, confused. What if this cloud I was watching touched down? What about all of those people who live in it's path?  Then I realized that the swirling funnel cloud they were showing on TV was right in the eye of the storm, right above our house. I had seen the devastation that tornadoes caused on TV, and despite living in the south, I never even dreamed that we might actually be in harm's way.

We were so blessed that that tornado never fully formed and never came all the way down, but there were a couple within a few miles of us that did. Luckily no real damage was caused and everyone was safe, but that was the closest we have ever come to an actual tornado and I hope and pray we will never come that close again.

Once the storm had passed the sky did all sorts of crazy things. Everything glowed orange and then purple. It was warm and almost as if it were a brand new day; a fresh beginning. There was a beautiful sunset in the big puffy clouds. All of our neighbors came out and it was almost as if we were all quietly celebrating the fact that we were so lucky.

Kylie was excited to go out and splash in the puddles. I'm glad she didn't understand what was going on at the time. I want her to always stay so sweet and innocent and I don't ever want her to know that scary things happen.

(In case you were wondering where Emily was in all of this, she was sound asleep in her crib. But believe me, I was ready to race in and grab her if that cloud came any closer.)

And with all of that said, I think I am officially okay with moving away from Tornado Alley!


--
We were lucky that this storm passed over us but some of our fellow southern states were not so lucky. Tuscaloosa, Alabama was one of those cities that was hit hardest. I just heard that the tornado that tore apart their entire town was a level 5 (the highest) tornado. My heart breaks for those victims that have lost everything including their loved ones. If you have a moment and feel so inclined please hop over to the red cross donation page (here) and help the relief effort.

Read more...

Georgia Aquarium

We went to Atlanta last weekend. It was so fun spending time in a big city. I guess I've spent too much time living in suburbia because I was amazed by all of the tall buildings and traffic and crazy drivers (all things that I grew up with back in California). The weekend really revolved around work and a wedding I was shooting but we had some down time to go sight-seeing and enjoy the city.

On Saturday we went to the Georgia Aquarium. It was really big (like, biggest aquarium in the US) but also really crowded. (Who's idea was it to go to the Aquarium on a Saturday afternoon???) I'll let you in on a little secret, I really, really don't like unorganized crowded places. So it took a few deep breaths when we first walked in but once we got into the individual exhibits where there was a little less chaos it was really neat. It is so amazing to think about the world that exists in our oceans and streams that we really only get a glimpse of in these aquariums. It is all so beautiful. The girls seemed to really enjoy it too. To Kylie everything was from Finding Nemo so she was really excited about the fish and sharks she was seeing and Emily just liked all of the pretty lights and colors.

Now that we are parents, we have the inherent duty to spoil our children by buying toys in gift shops everywhere we go. So we stopped in and let the girls pick out a little stuffy to take home. Ky actually picked out both, a little white beluga whale for Em Grace and a pink squeaky penguin for herself. (I couldn't pick just one picture of the girls and their stuffies because I thought the whole sequence of pictures told the story much better.)

P.S. How great is Emily's hair??? That's all natural baby!

Read more...