Easter Day...a month later!

I know I left my Easter post hanging, so here's the rest of the holiday in pictures.

Easter morning, the kids were thrilled to see that the Easter Bunny had brought them each a new bike helmet as well as baskets full of candy. He hid plastic eggs and some real eggs for them to find. He also had given them each a bunch of dry erase markers, thinking that they are now old enough for such "art" supplies. AND the Bunny apparently used those markers to leave the kids a message on their dry erase board thanking them for the snacks they had left him. :)

Now, weeks later, I can say that the Easter Bunny was WAY off. Those darn dry erase markers STAIN! I mean, seriously stain. WHAT was that Bunny thinking?!?!?

After the egg hunt and testing out at least one of each type of candy, we headed for Mass and then to Gram and Poppy's house. I just love this outtake of the girls together! These two sweet little things in their gorgeous Easter clothes...with hideous looks on their faces! Just makes me laugh!

They were waiting for someone to con Colin, my 20-month-old nephew, into a good mood. He wanted no parts of me and my camera that day! Alas there are NO pics of all four grandchildren in their Easter finery... sigh...

Finally, after waiting for a while and with no "Happy Colin" in sight, even my "loyal subjects" (ha!) escaped!!!

I was able to wrangle Master Benjamin back over to get some pictures of him with his sport coat. This is one of my favorites of him. Notice the new watch? Thanks, Easter Bunny. :)

And then I did THIS to myself. I told Ben to give me his "Mr. Cool" look. And THIS is what I got. Yeah... Not quite what I was going for, but very "6-year-old Boy," don't ya think?

This next one of Ellie is one of my all-time favorites. :)

This was as decent of a shot as Colin would allow me to have that day... What a hip little cutie pie in his pink shirt and striped pants.

I have a handful of pictures very similar to this one of my sister's kids. We had to bribe each of them with some interesting toy to hold, but by this point we simply wanted a shot to catalog the holiday, what they looked like, and what they wore. We were SO past trying to get a cute shot of them!!!! :) I think this one is a cool shot of Caroline's hair, though. WHO does that with a three-year-old's hair?!? Oh, right. My sister. :) She makes fancy look so "easy." :)

I just had to include this lovely shot of Caroline's swinging form. Cracks me up... I don't know how she stays on!

Ben took ALL of his tee ball and lacrosse equipment with him just in case there was a chance to play. Not bad form, eh?

Colin had to get in on the action, too, of course!

Notice Colin's keeper, a.k.a. Poppy, is wearing Colin's hat? And Ben's apparently tossing the tee ball and getting ready to hit the lacrosse ball that Colin left on the tee. Too funny!

What a fun weekend we had from beginning to end! Thank goodness the boys were both home from school again on Monday! We needed the day to recuperate and get back into the school frame of mind!

Cherish the Little Things

Check see what Ellie was up to today on my Pennlive blog!

Easter Eve

On the day before Easter, we packed A LOT of action into a mere 12 or 13 hours! The day began with Ben's tee ball practice.

We came home and knocked out some yard work. Jim and I moved a bunch of trimmed branches to the front curb in preparation for the township brush pick-up on Monday. As we made our final trip through the side yard, we were scared out of our minds by a momma duck flying off of her nest...that is nestled in between a shrub and our gas tank!!!! Can you see the nest and eggs below? I drew an arrow. :) The kids are super excited about the 12 eggs, and I'm sure we'll continue to keep a close watch over them. We have already come up with 12 names in birth order. We'll let you know when they hatch... Momma's still there, as of the evening of Friday, 4/24.

Then, while the kids and I headed in for lunch, Jim mowed the lawn. As he started on the back yard, he yelled to us to come see what other "wildlife" he had discovered! This little guy almost got a very close shave! :)

After the mowing was finished, the kids headed back outside for the "Summer Festibal" that Ellie had been planning for days. Even though it was quite warm, I wasn't too sure they'd last in the sprinkler. Well, I was wrong! They ran around in the yard, chasing each other through the water for a long while! Notice Ellie's goggles? Everyone needs goggles when running through a sprinkler, right? :) Ben was upset that he couldn't find his. I did eventually uncover them, but apparently I took too long. When I took them out to him, he had Ellie's Cinderella ones on, instead. :)

Ellie was SO excited about going to Nana and Pop-Pop's for our Weaver Family Easter Dinner that she couldn't stand herself! While the boys played Wii for a bit after the "Summer Festibal," I sat with her in the dining room and painted my nails (I know! Can you believe it?!?!) while she drew this picture for Nana and Pop-Pop. She was quite proud of her work, and rightfully so! Too cute!

Leave it to me to throw in a detour on the way to an exciting family event! I couldn't help myself, though. The kids were so adorable in their Easter finery that I just had to get some good pics of them! We took the long way to Nana and Pop-Pop's and swung by Messiah College for a super fast 10-15 minutes of photos. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Ben's serious face???

"C'mon, Ben. Give me a smile!" Yeah...Stacy, this one's for you! I think Ben and Eli are kindred spirits! :)

Walking back to the van. So sweet!

At Nana and Pop-Pop's we went outside for an egg hunt. What incredible weather we had for Easter weekend!!!!! Here are the three Weaver granddaughters. Corey, 7 1/2; Ellie, 4; Lily almost 2. Lily is wearing the dress that both of the older girls wore around the same age.

This next one of Ben just exudes little boy holiday excitement. Makes me smile... Incidentally, see the sport coat? I bought it at a consignment shop for $8.00. And I'm pretty sure that it is the reason the weather was so warm for Easter this year. It was like pulling teeth to get him to leave it on..."Mommy, I'm hot..." lol!

Ellie contemplating her basket of purple eggs after the egg hunt...

Each grandchild had a different color of egg to collect. It made for a much more civil hunt and quite a beautiful photo opp afterward! :)

Soon after the egg hunt, we dined with the Weavers and then headed home to prepare for the Easter Bunny's visit. Somehow the children decided that this year we should leave out a snack of lettuce, carrots, and water for the Bunny. Then, at the last minute, they decided that perhaps the Bunny would also like a banana! I have no idea where that idea came from! Since they weren't sure if he would eat it or not, we left it out as an "experiment." :) Then we trudged off to bed to rest for the next day's excitement...

Wow!

I cannot believe that it has been over a month since I posted here! I have been busy on my Pennlive blog, though. Please stop by to check out a bunch of new posts there! You can use the link below.

Being Becky

I'll be back this weekend to post some pictures and what-nots from the past month. I promise!

A Big Night of...Disappointment!

Ben has been so looking forward to this evening for weeks now! It was to be the evening of his first tee ball practice! He was even home sick from school yesterday and bound and determined to feel better by today so as not to miss this momentous occasion! :) We pulled in 10 minutes before practice time to discover that we were the only ones there and that the field looked like a war zone. A quick call confirmed my hunch; practice had been canceled until next Monday. Somehow, we missed out on the latest e-mail notification. Ben was really bummed, but Jim and I were so proud of how he handled himself. His eyes didn't even "leak"...as he always says! :)

I think Ben was partly content just to be wearing his new cleats. They are so tiny and cute!

LOVE this next pic of The Cleats and the toothless grin. :)

We ended up staying at the park for about half and hour. Ben ran around the battle ground...uh, I mean ball field, pretending to hit, run the bases, pitch, slide, etc. He did a very thorough job of breaking in his cleats, if nothing else...

He was so excited when he "found" home base. You would have thought we were having an egg hunt or something!

Ellie enjoyed playing on the tot lot that is adjacent to the ball field. Later, she also joined her brother's game of imaginary battle field baseball.

Check out the hat. I'm thinkin' Cousin Lily will be getting a hand-me-down cap soon...and we'll be hunting for a new one. :)

All in all, 'twas a fun evening even though it wasn't what we were expecting. Stay tuned. You can be sure that I'll be posting pics from the "second-first practice" next Monday!!!!

Lions and Lambs

Everyone stop griping about the dreary rain of the past few days! It could be worse...remember the SNOW?!?!?

Look what I never posted! I was too lazy to even edit or crop, so here's the good ole' raw version. :) This was supposed to be a cute picture of the kids in front of our almost-completely-buried lamp post. It ended up being a lesson in why one has to be careful about where one places his snowy gloves. Oh, the shrieking that followed. :) Plus, interestingly enough, Benjamin actually looks like he's two years older than Ellie in this pic! I think he was workin' the slope of the driveway and Ellie's adverse reaction to an ear full of snow.

This shot was taken after I finished growling at them..."Just stop for one minute and come over here to pose together. Someday you will want a picture of you in all this snow! I swear I'm not going to take a ton...blah, blah, blah..." At least they have good "fake" genuine smiles... :)

Keep those chins up, folks. Not too many more "lion" days left. Ellie assures me that tomorrow will most definitely be a "lamb" day.

Check out my latest Pennlive post here.

BIG Weekend!

The boys didn't have school on Friday because of...wind?!? :) So my scrapbooking weekend got off to a different start, since the whole family was underfoot, ...uh I mean home for the day. No, actually, Jim and kids played nicely and left me to my packing and organizing most of the time.

The morning had a ripple of BIG excitement when Benjamin's snaggle tooth began to bleed yet again after some rough-housing. Go figure. When Daddy wiped the blood, he easily pulled the tooth right out, as well!! Ben was so excited! I was planning to take some pics of his toothless grin after he got into clothes for the day, but when I peeked in and found him checking himself out in the mirror, I just couldn't not run for the camera!

So here's Mr. Toothless with rumpled hair and jammies...

I left Friday afternoon for what turned out to be an AWESOME weekend. My sister-in-law and I have been going to this retreat for four years now, and we look forward to it each year. It is run by Dani Grim, a Creative Memories consultant out of Carlisle, and she does an absolutely fabulous job with the whole event! Upon arriving, I was still in a fog from my cold. But miraculously a Quizno's dinner seemed to do the trick. By Friday night I was practically CURED!!! I'm serious. I didn't even open the box of cold medicine that I had packed and hardly even put a dent in the tissues! I am happy to report that I worked on a whopping 92 pages from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening and even found a little time to eat and sleep! I'm a tad bit tired now, but that's to be expected. Looking forward to next year...

And yes, MASH PIT Alums, the tradition lives on - While I was gone, Jim's pit kids struck again. They usually grace us with lovely yard decorations around Memorial Day and/or before Band Camp in August, but for some reason they thought it would be fun to do in the dead of winter this year! Jim took the following pics of the devastation, I mean decorations. For those not in "the know," the little white things all over the front lawn are plastic forks. That's actually a verb now...as in, "We got forked." :)

Apparently, they tied the decorating theme in with this year's indoor percussion show. The soap writing all over the windows and the car were "rules" referred to throughout the show. At least they were creative...

I think they're trying to corrupt our children...

Jim said the funniest part of cleaning it all up with both kids Sunday morning was their differing approaches. Ben was just happy to be outside helping. Ellie kept trying to plot revenge! :) I think she may be the one we have to worry about...