Easter Eggs -- and Carrots

Easter has become one of my favorite holidays. I love the festivity, the traditions, and the simplicity of it all. And the springtime! There weren't any flowers yet this year, but still, you could tell spring was on the way. 

Coloring eggs. Fast and furious with these two. 

The finished product. 

Hiding eggs around the house. We came up with some great hiding spots this year. Zeke requested this one. 

This was Aaron's idea. Love it!

One of the highlights of the day was Nora combining her Easter presents from grandma. She used her new watering can to 'water' and 'grow' her Reese's Pieces carrot. So cute!

Foot Pictures

For some reason my kids are obsessed with taking pictures of their feet. I guess that means you get to see all of Nora's cute shoes! (and some Zeke feet too)

Potato Harvest

We enjoy digging potatoes for a lot of reasons. Time spent with our Loertscher family. Satisfaction of working hard and accomplishing something great. Joy in digging the dirt on a sunny fall day. And of course, anticipation of eating yummy potatoes all winter long (at least for me and for Aaron....we're still working on the kids). 

The kids also love potato planting and harvesting because they get to play in their great-grandpa's backyard, which doesn't happen often. They also like looking around his old house when they go inside for bathroom breaks. This time Nora was fascinated by the fact that the doors have actual keyholes. 

We felt like we didn't get much accomplished in the potato-producing department because -as Aaron put it- we're growing kids. It was a constant teaching process. Showing them how to clean off the potatoes and where to put them, reminding Nora to walk where we had already harvested ('the fluffy dirt'), teaching Zeke to stay with the work even when he didn't want to, correcting Nora when she called the potatoes 'tomatoes', and showing Zeke how the potatoes grow off the roots of the plants. We talked to them about digging for potato treasure, and that made everything a little extra fun! The kids even got a turn to dig. 

Zeke the scarecrow.

Nora in the house. I took this picture because she is just so cute, dirt and all. When I told her she was adorable, she said 'Yes, I am.' Then she pointed to her shoulder and added, 'Look I have beautiful dirt!'

Nora's Third Birthday Party

Nora greatly anticipated her birthday this year, which is something I wasn't expecting from an almost-three year old. I think it's the Zeke influence in her life....he love love loves birthdays, and he is the one that showed her her birthday on the calendar. She can recognize her name ('It's my N-o-r-a, mom!), so she immediately claimed the whole month of August as hers. One night Zeke and I were talking and I said something about my birthday. Nora corrected me: 'No mom, my birthday, not yours. It's my August!'

Nora has a cousin who is 13 days older, and while we were at her party, Nora asked if she got to open any presents. I explained to her that this was Brielle's party, but her turn was coming later. That satisfied her, and she looked forward even more to her party and presents after that. 

Grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins did a great job picking gifts this year. Nora loves them all and we have had so much fun playing Little People and mermaids and blocks in the past couple of weeks. And she really does love her new clothes from her grandmas, even though she just dumped them in my lap and moved on to other presents at the party.

Draper and Carrie sent a package, and so we have also played a lot of magnetic 'paper' dolls too. 

Mom and Dad got Nora her very own piggy bank. She was with us when we found it, and she picked the color, even though she didn't know we bought it. In this picture she is saying something similar to 'A pig! Oh yeah, from yesterday [two weeks ago].'

Airplane cake. Like Zeke's train cake earlier this year, we have three plane candle holders, so it was meant to be. And she's always been an airplane girl. And she is in love with the movie Planes.

Miss Nora was also excited to blow out her candles. She didn't blow quite hard enough, so she got two of them after several tries. Aaron got the other one.

Mmmm, ice cream and frosting (the cake under the frosting got mostly ignored). And she had to have her planes on her pink plate. 

Nora makes us laugh and gives us lots of cuddles. She says and does the cutest things, and also has a pretty distinctive dirty look. She takes good care of all of us -  her 'mother hen' nurturing side comes out quite often!  Love this little lady so much!

Dishes

Nora has become my sink dishes buddy. She comes running when I start to fill the sink, and pulls a chair over to stand next to me and play in the rinse water. She has to have a wooden spoon to 'stir' the water (and to pass water over to my side). One time she took the wooden spoon with her when we got done with the dishes, and I let her have it to play with. Much to my surprise, when she was done playing, she brought the spoon back to the kitchen, dragged the chair back over to the sink, and put the spoon in the drainer.

While we are doing dishes, Nora will pull the dishes out of the water for me and put them in the drainer unless they are too heavy (which the pots filled with water usually are). She also loves the bubbles. Yesterday she said 'Oh the bubbles. They're beautiful!' I said 'The bubbles are beautiful?' She said 'Yes, they're so cute!' For the first time ever, doing sink dishes is fun!

Mittens for Church

On our way out the door to church last week Nora decided she needed to wear her mittens. I figured it wasn't worth it to argue, as it made her so happy. Look at her pose for me.

Once we got to church she kept them on for quite a while, until she decided she was ready to color. Silly girl!

Rocket Valentines

Zeke was sooooo excited for Valentines Day this year. I found a super cute printable Valentines template online a while ago, and Zeke approved it so we printed our own. He only wanted to use the rocketship design, so I did some editing (they needed to be smaller anyway!) and then we printed and cut them out together. After writing his name on the back and attaching them to a Valentines Kit-Kat, we were ready to go!

Valentines morning I made Cheerio hearts for Zeke and Nora before I left for work. Zeke woke up early so I was able to watch him discover his. He thought it was really fun. Nora woke later so I missed her reaction in person, but Aaron texted me that she said 'Oh cute!'.

This is Zeke with his haul from school. He was sweet enough to share with Nora. And of course mom and dad got the stuff they didn't want (it was pretty funny to watch them both try and reject the gummy cinnamon hot lips!).

Nora so happy to be sharing Zeke's suckers. Love the outfit; she insisted on the jumper today rather than the jeans I had planned ...... the conversation with Aaron while he was getting her dressed went something like 'No jeans anymore. I want dress.' 

Party for Nora

I had visions of making a fancy birthday cake for Nora this year, but given that she recently has decided that she would rather have frosting than cake, I traded the time-intensive cut-out cake idea for the cake with her favorite frosting. The decoration was a last-minute idea and I really like it, even though I didn't have Aaron and his artistic input helping me this time around. 

Nora thanks her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for fun tissue paper, plenty of gift bags to carry around, and such great presents too!

The cute Minnie Mouse tote bag is from us. Nora picked it out herself, and calls it her 'backpack'. 

Notice the change in shorts from the picture above. The orange ones are her absolute favorite, so I helped my mom pick out some others that are identical except for the  pattern. As soon as Nora saw the new shorts the orange ones were off and she was asking me to help her put the blue ones on. New shorts are Nora-approved!

Reading her new book from grandma and grandpa. 

This picture is a little blurry but it does a good job of capturing how she felt about her birthday candles. She was very hesitant and didn't really want to go near them. With a little urging, she blew at them but not hard enough to blow them out. Finally Aaron blew them out and Nora clapped and cheered along with everyone else. Zeke was a little distraught that Nora didn't get to blow out her own candles, but it didn't bother her a bit!

Winter Cuteness

Lots of cute little moments happened this month in-between our preparations for Christmas, closing on our house, and trying to heal from a couple different kinds of sickness. These kids make me smile.

Zeke loves all things winter (except maybe the cold....). He loves snowmen, Christmas lights, pinecones, snow on the ground, presents, and the list could go on. But one of his favorites is wreaths. He has been pointing out wreaths on doors all year long, and when probably 90% of our community had Christmas wreaths this month, he insisted we needed one for our door. We looked but couldn't find one we liked. Then Aaron's mom offered us her old wreath, and it's perfect! Aaron added a string of battery-operated Christmas lights, and Zeke is soooo happy. 

Another winter item Zeke loves is scarves. He can zip up his coat and put on his boots by himself, but he can't tie his scarf. So he drapes it around his neck and says 'Mommy, I want to be a present'.

Nora's vocabulary is growing and growing. She's picked up lots of new food words, especially with all the holiday treats we have received and made. She added marshmallow, pretzel, cookie, and M&Ms to her list in the past month. She's an M&M addict. A neighbor left a plate of chocolate chip cookies and Christmas M&Ms on our doorstep, and I couldn't get her to eat the cookie; all she wanted was the M&Ms!

Nora's latest trick is taking her socks off, and when I get her dressed in the morning she checks to make sure I didn't try to put socks on her (I don't - I've learned they'll just come right off!). So when we go out we have to put on both socks and shoes. At least she leaves her socks alone when her shoes are on! She's got to have cold feet, but as long as she doesn't complain about it....

The Toddler Stage

I had forgotten about all the craziness of the new toddler stage. Those times in the grocery store where we can't really carry her because she's heavy and wiggly, but as soon as you put her down she runs off. Or she insists on pushing the cart and gets upset when you stop to pick up another item.

She loves the fridge, and gladly sits on the bottom rearranging the condiments. She loves the dishwasher too, particularly pulling things out. And she makes a run for the outdoors whenever a door opens.

She is such a happy girl, as long as teething or tiredness isn't getting to her. She smiles a lot, laughs easily, and is a total ham for the camera.

Nora loves climbing into things and sitting on anything that is just her size (stools, stairs, mom & dad's laps...). She also loves pulling things out of the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. The plastic items out of the recycle bin are some of her favorite toys, and if you need a measuring cup or stirring spoon you first have to search the house to find it, then wash it, before you can use it.

Another favorite pastime is putting things in and out. (Like the cotton balls.) She also loves carrying bags and baskets around. Totally adorable!

Cotton Balls

Nora loves cotton balls. Of all the random things. She gets them out of the bathroom drawer pretty much every day then dumps them out on the floor, puts them back in the cup, dumps them out again... over and over. It's pretty cute!

If You Give Nora a Cookie...

Kids Pictures

Seems like there's always someone looking away or making a funny face when I try to get a posed picture of Zeke and Nora together. Got some cute ones though; it's life as it really is!