Easter Sunday

We had a fun-filled Easter weekend.  On Saturday, we enjoyed the 2nd Annual Stimmell Egg Hunt and Chinese Food Festivities.  It was a wonderful time with cousins running non-stop for hours.  I forgot my camera to document any of that, sadly.  On Sunday, we ventured out to church and enjoyed the service and egg hunt in front of the State House afterwards.

Dying Eggs

Finn was very serious about dying eggs this year.  He quite excitedly picked out an egg dying kit and was intent to do it all on his own.  And, he was really disappointed when we ran out of eggs to dye after the first dozen.

In the days before Easter, I had all these plans to research natural ways of dying eggs and letting Josette give it a go, too.  But, the best intentions just never came to fruition and Josette had to find her own entertainment while Finn decorated the eggs.  She chose one of her favorite activities these days - petting Lily under the table.  Oh, our sweet Lily can be such a naughty dog, but she is a saint when it comes to our kiddos!  Josette is still very much learning "gentle hands" with Lily.  She has a fascination with Lily's eyes and ears and often tried to suck on her nose.  She has a habit of trying to climb all over Lily and even use her to pull up.  Through it all, Lily is so patient.

And, a sad, but funny story regarding Finn's carefully dyed Easter eggs.  After church on Easter Sunday, we came home and, most naturally in my mind, I went to make some egg salad sandwiches for lunch.  I pulled a few of the eggs out and went about cracking one.  Finn looked at me aghast and asked with pure horror, "Why are you breaking my special eggs?"  I should also preface that this was one very tired little boy after a series of Easter celebrations through the weekend.  Oh, it broke my heart as I tried to explain that we would eat the eggs this week and his lower lip started to quiver.  Since then, he has happily gone into the fridge, extracted an egg for himself, cracked it and eaten it.  However, just today I went to move the eggs to another shelf and he quickly asked me what I was doing with his "special" eggs.  Alas, apparently, I am just not to be trusted.

11 Months Old

My, oh my, Josette is 11 months old!  It really just snuck up on me.  We are barrelling right to the big 1 year!  Wow!  Truly, the first year of life is amazing.  Josette is embrassing life as a toddler and exploring everything with gusto.  She is already trying to add speed to her walking, and I am afraid she will be running soon at this rate.  She has mastered drinking from a straw and a sippy cup and she does darn well just with a regular cup too.  She loves almost all food (except avocado, or all things), but she still loves nursing too.    She has learned to give kisses, but mostly reserves those for her Daddy.  She continues to work on all sorts of consonant sounds, and I swear I hear a lot of "Mama"!  She loves to play peekaboo and she likes to play a bit of chase, where she crawls away and you have to go after her.  She keeps looking back and giggling.  In fact, there are a lot of giggles from us all when playing with sweet Josette.

Toddler

Josette is on the move on just two feet these days.  She is happily toddling across rooms and chooses to walk versus crawl most of the time now.  She is still a little slow, but if you give her a hand to hold on to, she really gets some speed going.  What a busy, busy time.

Football Man

Finn has really taken to playing football in the backyard in the afternoons when Sean gets home from work.  Thankfully, he is fully outfitted with another fabulous gift from Uncle Jonny - the vintage football helmet and ball.  So, here is our Football Man and a big Happy Birthday shout out to Uncle Jonny!

Snuggles with Dad

Sometimes, you fall asleep reading books...

Charmingfare Egg-travaganza

Some friends of ours treated us to an Easter celebration at Charmingfare Farm, a local CSA and zoo down the road from us.  It was a lot of fun.

First, there was an egg hunt:

 Each kiddo got to bring an egg carton to fill.  Finn was very proud to decorate his before we went:

 Then, there were the animals.  Finn's joy at holding a bunny made me want to go out and get one.  He was so happy:

 Feeding the animals:

 They tickle:

 Our favorites, the goats:

 Josette enjoyed them too:

 A tractor train ride took us to a magic chicken in the woods:

 And back to rock climbing with the goats: