Clarity

"They" say the morning brings clarity.

You know what else the morning brings?

Bruises and black eyes.




But hey! At least I'm still smiling, right?





Lori - via my iPhone

A lesson in softball fundamentals

You should always try to use your ball glove to catch a softball thrown at you.









The face simply isn't as effective.






Lori - via my iPhone

Easter!

We had a great Easter Sunday full of church, family, food, fun and eggs.  Lots of eggs.  The "Easter bunny" brought the kids a few treats in basket form, and although I tried to prepare Carter the night before that the Easter bunny would be visiting our house that night, when he saw the baskets the following morning and turned to me and said, "Mommy... did you bought these for me?", I didn't have the heart to tell him no.  So I guess the gig's up at our house.  Oh well, Mommy and Daddy can create Easter baskets just as awesome as any bunny.

As always, we were running late to church, so there was no time for pictures beforehand.  Afterwards, I was able to shoot these few of the kids looking at the fishies at church. Side note: It was really bright in the children's building lobby therefore my auto flash didn't register and the pictures are of 35mm-film-circa-1987 quality.  You're welcome.

When telling your one year old to smile, apparently, you also need to tell her to look at you.

Fish make me feel so reflective.

As good as it's going to get...

Olivia absolutely loves her "Mickey", even though it's actually Minnie.

Cousins

His shirt is proof that you should take pictures before eating "sharbert."

Like daughter, like mother, like daughter.

Unfortunately, my camera battery died right as we were headed outside to hunt the eggs, so I resigned to using my phone for capturing those moments.  I did give Nick my Flip video camera, but how much footage can you watch of the back of children's heads running around a yard looking for small colored eggs?  If you've seen it once, you've seen it all.

Ready, set, go!

Show me your loot, Carter!

I feel the need to explain.  No, Olivia does not have a penchant for yellow eggs.  When hunting with two older cousins and a big brother, the girl's gotta have a fighting chance.  So we told the boys that the yellow eggs were for Olivia ONLY.  Then we proceeded to "hide" the yellow eggs.  And by hide, I mean, we placed them one by one on the concrete right outside the patio door.  A trail of eggs, if you will.

As if all the egg hunting (and hiding and hunting and hiding)--seriously, we did this like five times--wasn't enough in the fun department, we ended the day with cupcake decorating.  Thanks Gig!

VALUE, $2.99

Last night, I was on my own with the kids as Nick had a softball game.  We were headed to my nephew, Jackson's, school play, so I had about 15 minutes to pick up the kids and feed them dinner before heading north to Anna.  So I did what any healthy, responsible, caring mom would do.

I took the kids to Wendy's.

Anyway, while we were eating at our table, I noticed Carter was looking over my shoulder.  Then, all of a sudden, he says, "V-A-L-U-E" (spelling the word, one letter at a time).  I turn around to see this on the window behind me:

Now, I do understand that the V, A, & U are not technically backwards, but still.  He totally surprised me by reciting each and every letter in the order of how the word is spelled, rather than how it appeared [left to right] on the window.

Then, he proceeds to tell me "two ninety-nine."  I mean, he knows his numbers, he has for quite some time, but this was the first I had actually heard him say ninety-nine as one number (99) rather than nine & nine as two numbers that were simply close together.

I get it. I realize that this is not earth-shattering intelligence by any stretch of the imagination.  But this boy constantly surprises me with his observations, and being that I blog to document our day to day lives, well... this is it.