Easter Egg Hunt

This past Sunday, we took the kids to Oak Shade Grove for a private, kiddie, Easter party through GBU. This is my favorite party that GBU puts on because they do such a nice job with the egg hunt. Any other hunts I've been to are either limited to a certain number of eggs or are soooo crowded, they're not even fun.

Inside they had games, raffles and food set up.
The Munoz family was there too along with Craig's parents.

Getting ready to head outside for the egg hunt. I was soooo glad the rain held off!

Ready... Set... Goooo!!!

The eggs all had candy in them and we opened them all up back inside. :)

Celia scored big time! There were only a few kids in her age group and her basket was filled to the brim!

Will (age 4 years and almost 10 months), Cecilia (age 2) and Sophia (age 2 years, 11 months). Getting my kids to smile is like pulling teeth. Cecilia, on the other hand, is SO photogenic!

The kids call these "smiles"...

Nice, Sophie. ;)

The Munoz family and the first picture I have of their family of FOUR!

Baby V looks just like her daddy! She is 3 1/2 months old already!

Back inside, a special visitor greeted the kids! Sophie was verrrry uncertain for quite awhile but Will went right up for a hug. Typical.

After that, we walked back to our table to open all the eggs and listen to the raffle winners.

Checking our raffle tickets.

After being such a stinker this morning, I was surprised that Sophie was pretty well behaved for the party given it was smack in the middle of nap time (1-3 p.m.). She crashed when we got home and slept from about 3:45-6 p.m.

So glad the weather cooperated for an egg hunt this year!

Start Us Off, Cecilia, Start Us Off!! {clap, clap}

Iiiiit's BIRTHDAY SEASON again!!

And Cecilia Mae kicked us off with her 2nd birthday party on Saturday evening!

Actually, we do have some adult birthdays in January, February, March and April... but now we begin the kiddie birthday party season that takes us through early June:

Cecilia on March 31st

Sophia on April 20th

Cora on May 17th

Mya, Stella & Lincoln all on June 2nd

Will on June 8th

We've talked about combining some of them, but I actually kinda' prefer giving each child their own special day and I honestly think a combined party might be more hassle than two individual parties when it comes to the sheer number of guests and food necessary. My kids' parties are always pretty small and, for now, that works for us. I'm not rushing "friend parties" any sooner than awkwardly necessary. ;-)

Anyway, back to Celia's big day...

It WAS a big day for the little lady! Her parents not only came to our house the night before for Jill's birthday celebrating... but they braved a trip to the zoo and out to lunch before the party at 4 p.m.!! I can honestly tell you I will never be that organized to manage being away from my house the night before AND day of a party. :-) I have much to learn from Kelly in being "chill" when it comes to entertaining.

Can't believe our little niece is TWO years old already!

Kelly wisely planned helium balloons again.
And the birthday girl opened gifts in shifts to maintain interest level.
The party was Dora-themed and I was so excited to find her a kiddie-sized Dora tennis racket and Dora tennis balls since Kelly and Steve recently started taking tennis lessons. We also got her a magnetic drawing board like one we have. Didn't get any pictures of that though.

Lots of cute clothes and neat toys, including some very clever Tot-School-type "activities in bags" from our friend Susie. I love homemade gifts and this was such a brilliant idea. She tucked some simple activities into individual, resealable, plastic bags and tucked them all into a handy tote. Perfect!

I gave Kelly a hand in the kitchen for the meal. We had a large variety of homemade pizzas (pepperoni, margarita, meat-lovers, buffalo chicken, veggie, etc.) along with tossed salad and punch.

Craig took these while playing with our new camera. ;)

The (almost) all-girls table... except little Griff, who's head is hidden by his sister Addy. :) Will played awhile longer and ate later, but Sophie and Cecilia shared a table with the Gahler triplets (Lily, Griff and Addy) and together they covered themselves in pizza sauce.

Celia was a little unsure of all her guests singing to her at cake time. She looked almost as if she might cry for a moment, but then made a good effort at blowing out her candle.

The birthday girl's parents, serving dessert.

Did somebody say cake?

My (2nd) cousin Al with his brood of almost two year olds. The triplets turn two at the end of June!

Griffin is a mini-me of his daddy. And, of course, a Buckeye fan.

Love this one.

Craig tied balloon strings around Will's ears while he ate his cake. :)

And Sophie shocked me with her courage of picking up the house cat! We don't have cats around and she's normally pretty shy with animals other than Brutus. But she loved holding Aspen and wanted to carry her all around! I had to encourage her to put the cat down... for the cat's sake.

And speaking of picking things up... I had just finished helping wash little cake-laden fingers when I heard Kelly and other guests yelling "Oh! Oh! Oh no!" I glanced over just in time to see my almost three year old daughter holding her 3-month-old baby cousin, Veronica, whom she'd picked up out of her moving swing in the living room and carried into the kitchen doorway!!! I think everyone was afraid to yell anything else for fear Sophie would panic and drop Veronica on the tile floor beneath her, but she didn't drop her and she was actually holding her pretty well considering the impressive amount of weight that would be proportionate to her own size! I just can't believe it happened and we were all a little shaky and shocked once an adult managed to scoop Veronica out of Sophie's arms. The baby wasn't crying either, which just shocks me! How did Sophie manage that without V crying or anyone else seeing her walk by with an infant in her arms??!! That would be an awkward task just to get her out of the swing! So we had an over-and-over talk about how it's not okay to pick up little babies when you're just a little girl and that only adults are allowed to hold babies unless sitting down with adult supervision. I could tell Sophie felt bad because she kept telling me that "everyone said 'Oh no!'" and she had a worried look on her face, but sheesh! My daughter has an uncanny ability of getting herself into trouble a lot lately!

Meanwhile, Will was entranced by the fish on top of the toy storage unit. Not that he is by any means innocent in trouble-making, but I swear Sophie manages so much crazier feats than he ever attempted.

Anyway, my apologies to the Munoz family for the scare! We had a really nice time at the party overall!

Jill's Birthday Fun

Our friend Jill turned 40 today!! {April 2nd}

We got our usual group together for a delicious meal and some game playing on Friday night and, as always, we had a blast.

The birthday girl... who doesn't look a day over 29. :)
We played a fun game called Dice-capades (sp?) after the kids went to bed.

In this game, depending on where your game piece is located, you might have to sketch a picture for the other players to guess...

...potentially with your eyes closed.

You might be challenged to do random assignments with random styles of dice.

Here, I'd stacked a tower of five dice faster than my opponents before the clock ran out.

And Steve is struggling to make a tower using 10 of those itty bitty dice in less than 30 seconds. Not easy!

Jill, however, was able to successfully stack five dice in her palm while standing on one foot... in less than 30 seconds. ;)

With the physical challenge cards, you might have to do push-ups...

...or arm wrestle the opponent on your right. ;-)

Mike politely told me I was "pretty strong", while letting me struggle and get no where until I finally gave up. I was laughing too hard to be any good at this 'cause I can usually hold my own against another girl. Just sayin'... Mike is the owner of Will's karate school and has multiple degrees of black belts in multiple martial arts. Awesome luck for me then, huh?

There was also random trivia, acting, and charades involved. A good time was had by all. :)

After polishing off the strawberries that we were all dipping in the chocolate fudge sauce, someone requested graham crackers and then we finished off the sauce with those. Yum.

Love our friends.

Happy Birthday, Jill!!!