Easter in pictures

We kept busy on Easter weekend and I took plenty of pictures, so here goes.

First, noticed Evelyn kept saying Happy Easter, so I had to get a video

On Sat. we started off with an Easter Egg hunt at a Coralville park.   Calvin and Kevin were with us too!

The kids watched some tennis

Happy Evie!

 Afterwards, we spent some time at the park

 Close-up of Calvin and Evie saying good-bye (a little much PDA) 

Everyone running back to the van

Next, we went to some Easter activities at Sycamore mall.

Bella held a real bunny.  Evie was way too scared to get near it.

Evie with bunny mask

Bella does some coloring

and shows off the finished product

The girls get ready to dye some eggs

Love Evie's expression here

Patience is hard work

Look how pretty!

 Sunday morning the Easter Bunny came and we went to church

 Grandpa Groves came to visit and we did an egg hunt outside

We ate Easter brunch at the Iowa River Power Restaurant

Bella enjoyed her food

Jeff stuck out his arm with the camera and got this candid shot

Grandpa has his hands full

Finally went ended the weekend with an egg hunt with the neighbors.  Lots of fun in our backyards

Evelyn's First Trip to the Dentist

Both girls went to the dentist last Thurs and it went a lot better than I expected. Evie did fabulous, but it was Bella I was more worried about. Last time she gagged or something and sort of threw up and since then she has said she never wanted to go to the dentist again. In fact, whenever she hears the word dentist she practically breaks down in tears. To prepare her, we played pretend dentist the night before and she really enjoyed doing that. She was the kid, I was the Mommy and Jeff was the "dentist helper" and the dentist. When I picked her up at daycare the next day, rather than running over to me like usual, she saw me and the tears just started flowing. It was sad. Her teacher let her borrow a book from the class to take with her and that really seemed to help. As I was checking in at the dentist, Jeff showed up, (he was in between a mtg in Cedar Rapids and going back to work). That really helped since both girls ended up needing a lap to sit on while we were there. Bella went first and the hygienist tried to be very nice, it was obvious that there was something written in Bella's chart about her last visit. Bella screamed as the hygienist just tried to brush her teeth, but she survived. She was better when the dentist checked her teeth and he went really quickly, so that was good. He painted fluoride on her teeth and then she was done.

Next was Evie's turn. It was hysterical when the hygienist told her to open wide and she immediately opened her mouth as wide as she could. She will rarely let us brush her teeth at home, so this was really surprising. She also opened really wide for the dentist. When she was done, Bella exclaimed "Evie didn't even cry!". Evie has 18 of her 20 baby teeth! 17 and 18 have been breaking through the last week or so and have been making her miserable. The poor thing has been shoving her whole hand in her mouth at times and slobbering all over the place. He said 19 and 20 are about to break through too.

Bella then proceeded to throw an embarrassing fit about not liking the toy she got. They have toys in candy machines there and you get a token and she thought she was choosing something squishy, but it was hard. The dentist let her trade it in for something else....

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had a great day. Calvin came over and hung out with us in the morning. We have been having great weather around here, so Calvin, Evie and Jeff played outside, while I took Bella to see Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 at the movie theater (cheap kids' movies at the theater during Feb and March) We had told her it was coming up before we knew Calvin was coming over and she still said she wanted to go to the movie. (90% of her just wants to go to movies for the popcorn).

Later that day I took the girls to Hy-Vee. I was looking at bread which is the same aisle as cereal and Bella exclaimed "Mommy, I see something. Those are my FAVORITE." She's pointing at Lucky Charms. They actually sounded good to me and it was St. Patrick's Day so I said "Sure, let's get them". Bella said "Is tomorrow another stay at home day?" I said "Yes". She replied, "ok, I'm going to eat those for breakfast tomorrow". And I said, "fine". It had been a couple of years since the Lucky Charms incident (watching that video again brought tears of laughter to my eyes) We seriously haven't purchased a box since.

So, this morning Bella comes into our room saying her tummy hurts because it is so hungry. Neither Jeff or I want to get out of bed. I remember the Lucky Charms and tell Jeff that's all she really wants and to go pour her a bowl. I was right, that was all she had on her mind. Later, when it was actually breakfast time Bella said she wanted to eat lots more Lucky Charms and Jeff declared only 1 bowl a day and she had already had one. So, we talked her into Cheerios. Evie, of course, was listening to the whole conversation and declared she needed Lucky Charms as well, so I added a few into her Cheerios.

More of the four friends

Videos to come....

Winding down with "Super Why"

Adding two more makes things easier!

We always love hanging out with the Davis fam because the kids get along so well together. Playdates with them are more relaxing than our normal routine.

Case in point, just the boys come over today for less than that 2 hours and Jeff manages to sneak in a nap! You have to look close, but you can see Jeff snoozing in the background in this picture!

Evelyn and Tyson

I have trouble saying "no" to this sometimes...

A quick laugh

I was looking through the pictures from Robin and Bella's adventure on the train (see previous post) when I came upon this picture.

When I first saw the picture it looked like it did above and took me a little longer than it should have to realize that the train was not traveling 100mph and that Bella was not holding on while enjoying every second. The issue was that the picture needed to be rotated which is not nearly as entertaining as how I first saw it.

Reading on the Rails

On a Sunday in January, Bella and I took a train ride as part of the One Book, Two Book celebration. The train was the Hawkeye Express and we took it from the North Liberty library to the U of I Main Library. It was exciting because the train tracks run close to our house and we cross them and drive along them in our every day life, so I was interested to see the city from a different view point. I wasn't even sure where all the train tracks went.

When I read about it, I wondered why it would take 45 minutes to get from one library to another and when we got on the train I knew. It went really really slow. Bella was interested in looking around the train and they also had book characters on the train, so she really enjoyed that. By the time we got to the Main Library, it was already time to take the return trip home, so we basically spent two hours on the train. On the way back, it was getting kind of dark and Bella was getting bored, so she just drew for a while. I had a discussion with someone who was working on the train and knew a lot about it. I told him it seemed like the Hawkeye Express went quite a bit faster. He said "Oh yeah, the Hawkeye Express goes about 40 mph and the regulations for the historic track we are on only allows us to go 10 mph. " Yep... 10 mph. No wonder it seemed slow. It was the first time passengers had been on the track instead of cargo since 1957! The train got back to the North Liberty Rec Center at 6pm and Jeff was playing bball then, so it worked out perfectly for us to meet up with Jeff and Evie when we got back.

Ready to go

Corduroy was on the train!

Where we cross the train tracks every day

Iowa River



Bella sneaks another picture with Corduroy

Drawing on the way back

This is Evie waiting for us at the Rec center, she was actually pretty sick that day

We met up with the Davis boys to watch bball

How ice cream can warm your heart

Big sis helps lil sis eat ice cream

Happy Valentine's Day!

Evelyn's "Strong"

Grandpa Groves came to visit on Sunday and took this picture of Evie and aptly captioned it:

"I am so mad. Grandpa came to visit today and he did not bring us any of that great butternut squash"

Updates

It's been awhile since we have blogged on a consistent basis so here are a few updates. Evie has been using the potty for the past several weeks, she usually has a BM or pees when she sits on it. She is very proud of herself after going and has a potty dance that she does. Evie is not at the point where she can lose the diaper and we do not expect that for quite sometime, but we are very proud of the progress she has made thus far. Evie is mostly interested because she sees Bella sit on the potty and her big sister has been her biggest cheerleader. She will get in her face after she has gone potty and say "Good job, Sweetie" and dances with her afterwards. Evie is also saying a lot more words and is really developing her personality. She is currently refusing to eat foods that are not fruit snacks or treats (at least she is not eating her lunch and dinner particularly well as of late). Evie has also been taking off her coat and shoes by herself when we get home.
Miss Leah from school did this to Evie's hair-so cute!

Bella is growing everyday and learning new skills. She has been doing gymnastics and really is enjoying it. Her writing skills continue to improve as she worked on Valentine's Day cards today. She wrote her name on the cards and started righting them in the proper order. She has been writing them in them in the proper order but not consecutively (i.e. her name has often times looked like Bllae). Bella is a bit of a drama queen as she got frustrated about writing her name. She wrote the "A" before the "L"s and said "I am going up to my room to cry forever." Bella has become interested in the names of streets, but I think she only has one down which is Interstate 80. Anytime we go by it or on it she yells "Interstate 80!"

Sample of Bella's work. (She chose "Hidden Pictures" for her Valentines. She really is loving doing Search and Find books, and probably didn't realize that these are quite a bit harder, but she's still excited about them)

We will do some long overdue posts on our trip to Florida and Disney World in November/December, Bella's BDAY, Christmas, and more.