Fabulous Face Painting

Yesterday, our community center had a fun, free Health Fair. We mainly went over for a fun afternoon of swimming, but ended up enjoying LOTS of other fun activities. (Unfortunately, this meant that I was not prepared with camera.) After swimming, the girls got their faces fabulously painted. Check out Spider Girl and Pixie Fairy...

This lady was so talented and popular that I noticed the college-aged staff all had face paintings by the end of the afternoon.

M&M Dad left early to go home and start dinner (yes he's a sweetie) and the girls and I went to do a craft in the preschool room. Next, we went to the tumbling area, but this totally stressed me out because the 13 year old boys were using the room as their personal cage match, so I quickly moved the girls over to the indoor playland. (In the playland it is A LOT harder for large boys to get up a head of steam...)

We came home to Starshine's favorite spring dinner - salmon with spinach and strawberries (yes, my kids are the best healthy eaters!) and they ate the house down.

This was definitely more activity than our typical Sunday afternoon/evening, so the girls slept like rocks last night.... ahhhhh.

Super Reader!

A few weeks ago, Jr. Princess was upset that we wanted her to work on her reading instead of watch tv. So, she did the worst job of faking that she didn't know how to read to try and get out of it. Well, that doesn't fly at our house, so we made a new rule that there is no tv unless you do 1 page of positive-attitude (this part was key) reading homework that day. Well, she lasted about 1 1/2-days before she got with the program.

And we knew she could do it! It was only about a week before she finished her whole first phonics kit, and she was actually choosing to do more each night as she became super proud of herself. She finished the last book last week, and got to pick where we went out to dinner to celebrate. Snuffy's! She selected chicken fingers, about 1/2 of my hamburger, and a delicious brownie malt.

Welcome to the reading club, Jr. Princess!

Easter Fun

The Easter Bunny came last Sunday while the girls were playing outside. Apparently, he/she needs to be more obvious because they didn't notice the eggs leading the way down the steps for quite a while. After a quick search of the downstairs they found all of their eggs and baskets. The Easter Bunny must know about the over the top extravaganza that is our neighborhood Egg Hunt, so he smartly brings toys and dresses instead of lots of candy.


Soon after we went across the street to the big event. Here is the annual photo where antsy kids wait patiently for lots of group photos. Notice everybody has large shopping bags because cute little baskets will just not suffice!

And they're off!
You really don't need to "hunt" for the eggs as they litter 4 consecutive backyards...

And the best part - sorting and organizing the haul! (This isn't even everything!)

We joke about how many over the top this event is, but our neighbor loves it and you can see how it brings her joy. And it is definitely something the girls will always remember.

Getting Ready for Easter

This morning we started getting ready for Easter by dyeing Easter eggs. I think this was officially the first year I wasn't super afraid that there was going to be a dye-disaster. They are getting so big and responsible (tear)...

Then, they went across the street to help the neighbors fill the thousands of eggs for tomorrow's big Easter egg hunt. (I am not exaggerating when I say thousands!) They, of course, came home with a preview of the treats to come. Jr. Princess enjoyed the fake-gummy Dracula teeth...

Later they were both excited to find Easter packages from both sets of Grandparents in the mail. Grandm/pa M - they love the dresses. And Grandm/pa L - we all got a kick out of the gross book tonight. Thank you!

The apple doesn't fall far from the bird-filled tree...

M&M Dad is a bird watcher. In fact, this year he is even keeping a list of all the birds he sees. So, it gives me great delight to point out cool birds I've seen when he wasn't around. Well, his love of birds is rubbing off on the girls.

Thursday when we were leaving school, Jr. Princess said, "What's that bird in the tree. Has Dad seen it?" Starshine replied, "Well it looks like a crow, but doesn't sound like one." This then turned into ten minutes of us craning our necks to see a small black bird high in a tree. The girls were commenting on color, and size compared to a crow, and also studying it's call. We then rushed home to the birding software, and narrowed it down to our new friend, the Rusty Blackbird!

They were so proud to tell M&M Dad about it when he got home. And the best part - he hasn't seen one yet!