Easter

We love Easter. We love celebrating Easter for religious reasons, and we also love celebrating the coming of spring.
The kids always enjoy coloring eggs and I have finally learned how to take a deep breath and worry less about the mess. In the spirit of relaxed motherhood, I even hard boiled more eggs this year so we could enjoy even more.

Dying eggs turned out to be really fun and they turned out great. Matthew was much more careful about colors and designs. His eggs were colorful and detailed. Most of Rachel's eggs ended up purpley-gray. She loved the colors -- a little too much.

On Saturday morning some of our neighbors had an egg hunt for the kids. It was a lot of fun. Rachel was sooo excited and ended up with a good haul. Matthew helped with the hunt and took pictures of the whole thing. He's quite the photographer and got some really good shots of some of the neighbor kids.

That evening we headed to Ogden to my brother and sister in law's house for Easter dinner and another egg hunt for the kids. Dinner was wonderful! The kids all had a blast playing together, and yes, getting more candy.

Easter morning the kids were up fairly early to have the official Easter Bunny egg hunt and to find their baskets. They got some fun outdoor toys - bubbles, a soccer ball, a playground ball, sidewalk chalk, etc. Steve had to work, so he got to watch the hunt, then had to head out. Bummer.

This picture of the kids in their Easter duds was taken after church so they look a bit bedraggled. They looked darling, though, in their new clothes. Church itself was another story, but at least the kids looked good. I won't go into detail about our church experience, but we'll just say that one of our finer moments involved Rachel lying on the chair during singing time while the other reverent Easter clothed children sang the "Hello" song to the new children. Rachel sang too... her song went a little something like this, "I'm not having fun. I don't like Primary. This isn't fun for me..." Yah. I don't know why I would even hope to think that just because it was Easter that my Sunday would be any different than any other.

After church the kids spent some much needed time outside drawing with their sidewalk chalk. We are officially ready for spring!

Happy Birthday Bailey!

Bailey Elizabeth Foster joined our little family a year ago. It's so hard to believe that it's already been a year and my baby is one! It's been so fun this week remembering the time of eager waiting and then the day of her birth.





Bailey was our smallest baby weighing in at 5 pounds 15 ounces, but there was nothing little about her big spirit. Her big brother and sister could not have been happier or more proud of their little sister.





On Friday evening we had my sister and her family over for a little birthday celebration for our big one year old. Rachel helped me pick out decorations and Matthew and Steve put them up. Sweet Bailey surely didn't understand what was going on that day, but she certainly knew something was going on and she loved the streamers and balloons. She was actually pretty giddy about everything -- coudn't stop clapping and laughing.

Generally for our birthdays, the b-day gal or guy gets to choose her/his favorite meal for dinner. Well...Bailey eats very very little as far as solids go, but we recently discovered that she likes noodles. So, pasta it was. I made fettuccine alfredo and she loved it. YUM!

I know - there are four candles on the cake where there really should be only one, but I had a whole gaggle of children helping blow out candles. (We had to re-light and blow a few times). I was informed by my children and my nephews that there ought to be only one candle for every year of life. So, this was one candle for Bailey and three for her birthday guests.

Traditionally the birthday child gets her own birthday cake to mangle and eat. Up until very recently we really thought that Bailey would merely shove the cake off her highchair tray and be done. She did, very delicately, dip into the cake and even eat a bit of it. Go, girl!

Don't worry -- she's a Foster...she'll learn how to eat with the best of them. :)

She got an Elmo Live. I wasn't so familiar with this toy, but Bailey really likes Elmo from watching little glimpses of Sesame Street or Elmo's World dvd's that Rachel watches. It's really cute, but a little overwhelming, apparently, to a one year old. She was enthralled...and a little tiny bit freaked out. Little Sweetie was laughing hysterically and clapping one second, and then almost crying the next. After a few minutes she kind of got the hang of it and really liked it.

Aunt Becky and all the boys got her a new baby doll, too. It's darling and she loves it. She just kept kissing her new baby ... and poking it's eyes. (Isn't it funny how they do that? All of my kids have been obsessed with eyes of dolls and stuffed animals at this age.)

This year just flew by and it seems like just yesterday that Bailey came to fill her spot in our family. We can't imagine our lives without her. Her beautiful smile and laugh are contagious, (She has this big belly laugh that surprises people who have never heard it.) and she brings us so much joy. We love our little Bailey Babers so much and are so grateful she's ours!