Easter weekend

The Thursday before Easter, Riley's class had an egg hunt scheduled, but since the weather had been wet, it had to be inside the classroom this year.  The kids still have a great time!

On Friday, the kids were off school, but Roy had to work.  I had been talking with Rachel about how Texas bluebonnet pictures were so popular, and we decided to pack the kids in her van and head to Brenham for some bluebonnet photos before they move back to Ireland!  I have been wanting to do pictures of the kids in the bluebonnets ever since we moved here, so I was excited!  Along the way, we saw many people stopping on the side of the road for photos, but we went to a field just outside Brenham that Kim had found last year and recommended.  Much safer for the kids!  I took a zillion photos but never got anything too spectacular!  There were either other people or buildings or cars in the background, or Riley was squinting, or Riley had her super cheesy smile glued on, or there were too many shadows.  I have zero editing skills but with a few clicks of 'auto' I was able to tidy up a few!  It was a fun adventure and I'd love to try again next year (but without Rachel since she will sadly be gone)!!  Here are some of the better ones that I got:

And our (pathetic!) attempts to get all 5 kids smiling and looking the same direction!

To reward the children for all behaving and smiling nicely for our cameras (and to feed them because they had all turned into hungry monsters!), we took them to play at a playground that Monica had recommended to me a couple summers ago.  Turns out that Rachel and the kids had been there before!  There were shaded picnic tables for us to have lunch at and a few different play areas.  It was a fantastic park!

Now, other than bluebonnet photos, the whole point of going to Brenham is to go to Blue Bell for the tour and/or ice cream.  But, unfortunately for us, they 1. are not conduction tours right now, and 2. had closed the ice cream parlor for the holiday!  But we found another ice cream shop that served Blue Bell and bribed the kids to leave the playground with promises of ice cream!

(P.S. See those bright colors in Riley and Rory's ice cream?  It apparently was a wee bit too much for their tummies ... both of them had aches all weekend until a few colorful trips to the bathroom finally took care of it all.  No more Krazy Kolors ice cream for them!)

Then it was time to pack the crazies back in the car for the drive home!

On Saturday, we were invited to an egg hunt at the Stratton's.  The kids had a great time playing with all the other kids for a few hours, and the Daddies did a super job scattering the eggs all around the yard for the kids to hunt.

There were some confetti eggs brought out, which are always a fun time!

Riley had an especially fun time smashing one on Daddy's head ...

And, oh, by the way, those shells are hard and might just hurt a bald head!

On Sunday morning, the kids woke up to find that the Easter Bunny had visited our apartment.  Of course, they woke up when it was still dark because they were so excited, so I didn't bother trying to take photos!  Leighton was very curious if the Easter Bunny would "actually bring Peeps this year", and his wishes came true - he brought peeps on a stick!

He also filled the eggs with the usual chocolate and goldfish, but I guess he decided the kids didn't need very much chocolate and filled a lot of the eggs with Shopkins and coins, too.  What a smart Easter Bunny!

After a morning of chocolate, Roy and the kids took Riley's bike out for a long ride while I prepped for dinner and baked a carrot cake for dessert.  We then had a lunch of Leighton's favorite 'eggie chicks' and went for a walk to Walgreens for some Coke to try to clean some pennies.  We stopped at the pool on the way home to dip out toes in.

We enjoyed a nice dinner together, and enjoyed our dessert even more!