Alexander Rolled Over

He's growing up too fast...

Secular Easter

In an attempt to focus on Christ and not the Easter Bunny on Easter Sunday, we did all of our secular egg and bunny activities on Saturday. I'm thinking the Easter Bunny will always visit our house a day early compared to other kids... I would do it a day late so I could get 50% off on Easter candy, but it seems a little too cheap. At least with Orthodox Christmas eve, it's always on the 6th of Jan, but the Orthodox Easter date moves.

Benjamin loved his Lightening McQueen Easter basket. (Thanks Grandma!) We had an egg hunt in the back yard and Benjamin got an extra special surprise (a toy garbage truck) when he found the plastic carrot. We used the video camera for the hunt and I haven't downloaded the footage yet.

We dyed Ukrainian style Easter eggs.




And Benjamin decorated random things with stickers to stay out of trouble.

After decorating eggs, Ryan and Benjamin used wooden spoons to have a "White House Lawn style egg roll" in our hallway. Benjamin really enjoyed that.

Next year I'm thinking we'll add "egg tapping" to our traditional activities.

The Lewis Boys Meet the Easter Bunny

Bellevue schools has a really amazing early childhood center. We usually only make it there about once a month, but should go more often. We missed the "Polar Bear Club" kickoff at the zoo by accident b/c we were randomly at the ECC (a.k.a. Welcome Center). It was great that we went though because we found out there was an Easter Egg Hunt the next day. Benjamin got to decorate a bunny milk jug basket for it.
Benjamin was allowed to find 5 eggs each filled with 3 jelly beans. They wanted the eggs back after the hunt so Benjamin insisted on eating all 15 jelly beans as he cleaned the eggs out. I didn't fight him on it so he was sugar loaded for the day. I'm glad we went to the 1400 hunt and not 1000 where they had 150 kids. It was still a madhouse with 40 or 50 kids.
The Easter Bunny made a surprise appearance. I didn't think about putting Alexander in the photo, but I'm glad they offered. It was Ms. Mary in the costume and she was trying not to talk so the kids wouldn't recognize her, but she wispered "I did this earlier today and it worked" which put me a little more at ease.
I have a hard time talking to Benjamin about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus becuase I feel like I'm lying to him and I don't want him to think Jesus is pretend like they are when he finds out they're not real. I haven't reconciled it, but try to be low key about the EB and SC.

So much for being clean...

There's a reason I don't bother to shower daily any more or even change my shirt when I get spit-up on me. I had just gotten dressed and made the mistake of picking up Alexander without a burp cloth. You can also see why I use a swaddling blanket and not just a burp cloth. Alexander gets better coverage than Benjamin ever did.

2 Months and Spam Sushi

I didn't get a good photo of Alexander on the 4th so his 2 month pictures are a day late.

In most of these photos, either Benjamin or Alexander was blurry.

We went to Ryan's parents' to watch General Conference. I made wheat bread rolls and Spam sushi for my contribution for the in-between-sessions snack. I found the sushi recipe in the Omaha "Weird (i.e. World) Herald." It said Obama had been seen snacking on it while he was golfing in Hawaii...

It was my first attempt at sushi and turned out fairly well. Ryan liked it a lot more than I did, but he likes processed meat and teriyaki a lot more than I do. Next time I make it, I'll make the rice balls smaller.

Benjamin loves Grams spinach balls.

Benjamin is holding the "Gramp waker-upper".

This is before Ryan discovered Alexander hates having his ears nibbled on...

...This is after. Poor Alexander.

You really want your nails painted!?!

I found a snag in my nylons when I was getting ready to go to the temple. I couldn't get the lid off the clear nail polish so I used white instead. Benjamin was very interested in what I was doing and asked me to paint his nails. I started one by one and he kept asking for another. I made the mistake of asking if he wanted a different color when I finished the first hand. When I was done and blew on the nails a bit to let them dry, Benjamin tried to wash the polish off. I was almost late to the temple because I had to pull out the polish remover. The big mistake with the red was it stayed on his cuticles very noticeably for almost a week.

Boingz

Those were some big bounce houses. Sky and Lily are very adventurous. There was a bit of a maze in this one and Benjamin followed the girls to find his way through. He didn't want to go through it without me at first. The kids had to work hard to even get inside them and played hard that day. I'm sure Benjamin's muscles were sore from it. I carried him home from the park by Gram and Gramp's house that evening because he was so tired.