Egg hunts and tulips

I was quite ambitious when planning today.  We went to the neighborhood egg hunt... where Carter was with the other Kindergarteners

Waiting... we were the first ones there.  Did I mention Henri got up at 5:30 this morning?

Carter hunted across the park with the big kids

Henri made a killing in the under3 area.  The kid was an egg hunting machine!

Then we headed off to our church's egg hunt.  Henri had a hard time focusing during the story time...

He tried finding a place to sit...

But eventually bided his time sticking stickers on his shirt...

But finally we searched for eggs and had fun, then ran out of there to try to meet Jane for lunch at McDonald's to head up to the tulip fields.  Along with the rest of Western Washington.  We tried to make it for noon, by 12:45 we finally made it through the traffic.  That's right. A little over an hour to get from Kirkland to south Arlington.  Henri & Valerie napped.  We got Happy Meals, the babies woke up. Then we sat in more traffic. Valerie cried, the boys played with Happy Meal toys, toys from Jane and toys from the Easter Egg hunt and Jane and I had time to catch up. We finally reached a field at FOUR PM. 

I tried really hard to get a picture with all three of them looking up.  This is what I got before Carter squinted the rest of the time, and the babies found the dirt, which of course was more fun than the photo shoot.

I got no pictures of just Jane and just I or the two of us together :(

Then I gave up and tried just following around the little ones and got a few cute shots...

  then Henri discovered the mud...

It's now 10pm and the babies are being baptised  tomorrow. Carter & Henri are fast asleep, Valerie's playing at my feet and Paul is leaving BC tonight to make it back in time.  He's missing 2 championship games in order to be there as they are currently in first place in their last curling tournament of the season.

Cute pictures of Valerie

Well, Valerie has moved past her 6 months clothing, which is sad, but exciting because now she has a whole new wardrobe!


The first dress my mom made...

Paul got her this shirt

Carter's Birthday party

Sigh... I now have a 6 year old.  We joke that Carter's our Easter baby and Henri's our Thanksgiving baby; that it took us 3 tries to get a baby away from a holiday. 

Of course the one year that his birthday is about as far away from Easter as possible is the year he picks it for his birthday party theme.  We had 15-18 kids, about 1/2 from Carter's kindergarten class...

We decorated eggs & cookies & had an egg hunt.

Thrift store finds

While waiting for Carter's party to start I thought he and I could check out the local thrift store recommended by a friend who blogs her thrift store trips (see "blogs I follow").  I also dropped off some stuff from the garage to get a 20% off coupon and we looked for some Easter decorations for the party.

Well, we weren't as successful as I had hoped with Easter decor, but we did find some good stuff.

I needed jeans, so we checked out the jeans, I found 4 pairs, all fit (2 are lose at the waist, but a belt will fix that.

Banana Republic jeans for $10 (Retail $80)
Merona (Target) jeans for $4
Gap Jeans for $6 (Retail $70)
Lucky Brand Jeans for $6 (Retail $100-$130)

All but the gap pair look perfect condition, Gap has a little fray I can cut off.

Adorable dresses for Valerie:

$2.80 each

Cabbage Patch Doll for Valerie for $2.50 (Retail $25)

Cute hats/jackets for Valerie:

the green summer top was $2 (baby GAP)
Brown & pink $3.20
Pink baby gap jacket $2 (probably $25 retail)
The adorable knit hat with the stem on it?  80 cents.  They retail about $12-$20 in the baby boutiques
The white poncho (no size, how useful!) $2
Brown Velour sweatshirt $2

End of Canada trip and reentry

We had an egg hunt at Nana's on Sunday, when we celebrated Mark's birthday.

  Back at home, Henri's too cool in the back seat going to gym class...

The kids sung to Carter and he got his birthday crown after he informed his teachers his birthday was over break.

Sleepover & Carter's water party

Friday night, Brooklyn came over for a slumber party with Henri, Saturday night we had Caitlin for Carter.

The kids got a bit wild with Brooklyn...

Paul's family threw Carter a great water party!  We went to the Americana Hotel that has a water park inside. With the windows and sun, you'd think it was summer instead of the beginning of spring. 

Valerie and Henri spent most of their time in the toddler pool.  The rest of us checked out the wave pool and waterslides...


Then we ate, opened presents and had cake-Carter requested chocolate cake with waves on it.

Then we had tokens to play in the arcade.

The babies got tired out!