Almost done.

Dare I say that I think the end is in sight with rearranging my flower bed.  Yesterday I finished digging up some sod and mulched an area.  On today's agenda is planting one more azalea and adding more mulch.  Starting Friday, it's supposed to rain for a few days, so maybe I'll put some annuals in next week if I feel rejuvenated after the weekend!

Tyler sat outside with me yesterday while I did some work.  He just happened to be sitting in front of one of my newly planted (and blooming) azaleas :)

Enjoying spring.

One day last week, I took a break from planting and sat outside with Tyler to enjoy the beautiful spring weather we're having here.  He's been outside a lot with me lately and has been a great sport while I work on the yard.  He was an even better sport as I sat there with the camera in his face :)

And for anyone looking for a great toy to give as a baby gift, I highly recommend Sophie the Giraffe by Vulli.  Tyler loves this squeaky toy!

Claire's 3rd birthday pictures.

I finally had a chance to sort through the pictures I took on Claire's birthday last Sunday.  After being disappointed in myself that we had such a short celebration for Claire's birthday, I was pleased that I captured some good pictures of her with the cake and opening her presents. 

Here's the birthday girl while Mom is trying to get that "posed" picture of her with the cake.  I ended up with a serious face and a silly face. . .

Waiting patiently (right now) for Dad to get the candles lit.  Again, we were scrambling to get this birthday celebration going, so it took us a while to first find candles, and then the matches. . .

Singing "Happy Birthday". . .

and blowing out the candles. . .

We aren't impatient, are we?

Now that half the frosting is gone from the cake and on Claire's face, time to help Dad cut pieces for everyone else. . .

Finally enjoying a slice of cake (and keeping a close eye on what's remaining at all times!)

Still planting.

Every spare moment I have had this week, I've been in the yard trying to get the azaleas planted.  With constant interruptions from the kids, it's been hard to get much accomplished each day.  I'm hoping to get them all in before Saturday because it looks to be a wash out that day (not to mention Mike is also working), so I don't think I'll get back to this blog until then.

A looong weekend.

I don't think I've ever been so happy for a weekend to come to an end.  It was absolutely beautiful here this weekend, so I decided to tackle yard work and halfway through realized I was in over my head. 

Let's see, for a brief recap. . .

• Mike bought sod early Saturday morning and we laid 60 or so in part of our front flower bed. 
• Saturday afternoon, I bought 7 azaleas to replace some shrubs in my remaining flower bed.
• Saturday night I dropped our laptop computer and it stopped working. 
• Sunday morning I dug out 13 shrubs.
• Early Sunday afternoon, we all ventured out to buy a new hard drive for the laptop, compost to amend the clay soil for the azaleas, and a cake for Claire's birthday (nothing like waiting until the last minute).  And Claire, who never naps anymore, actually fell asleep in the car!
• Later Sunday afternoon, I decided to transplant 4 of the shrubs I removed from the front flower bed to the side of the house. A real pain because of having to amend the clay soil with top soil.
• Finally, time to celebrate Claire's birthday!

Claire turned 3 on Sunday!  As Mike and I both said, we should have only tackled the sod this weekend. So unfortunately, Claire's birthday celebration at our house did not happen until right before dinner, and I was quickly throwing everything together, including wrapping her gifts, right beforehand.  I've never been one for doing a lot to celebrate birthdays, but I do feel guilty for doing so much outside on Claire's birthday and not focusing as much on her!  She did get cake and had fun opening her birthday gifts, so I guess that was the most important part for her.  But I may have to do a little more this week to make myself feel better.

There are pictures from Claire's birthday, but those will have to come a little later since I need to get Photoshop reinstalled.  Fortunately, our laptop is back up and running with a new hard drive and I only lost edited pictures from the last month.  All the original pictures were thankfully preserved on memory cards or DVDs. 

All about Grace.

Spring has sprung.  I love seeing all the flowers and watching the green bermuda grass come in.  The kids are watching less TV (sometimes no TV at all) because we are playing more outdoors.  It would seem all is good, but alas, there's Grace.  My oldest, who is almost 5, has reverted to a 2 year old since spring has arrived.  There are daily temper tantrums over nothing, constant crying, and what I hate the most WHINING!  Lately it appears that Grace does not even know how to ask me for something, even a glass of milk, without whining.  All I can say is thank goodness for preschool because if I did not have those 4 hours each day right now, I think I'd lose my sanity.  So I'm praying we're just going through a phase as we're adjusting from our winter routine to our spring routine and Grace will have snapped out of it in the next few weeks.  Otherwise, it's going to be a LOOOOONG summer break around here!

Now of course, Grace is not like this all day.  She can be quite funny and lovely when she wants to be. . . usually when she's getting her way.  Lately though, when we're outside she seems to be in the best humor when someone has a sprinkler running.  Here she is last week enjoying our neighbor's.  There were quite a few kids playing, but I did not bring out the camera until the end and it was a bit chilly with no sun, so Grace was the last one standing. 

Since this post is all about Grace, I do have to share a story about her from last weekend.  We had our community yard sale last Saturday.  We decided not to sell this year because Mike and I did not want to spend our nights after the kids were in bed finding things to sell and tagging items.  So this time, we enjoyed shopping at our neighbors' houses.  Mike took the girls with him down the street and while they were looking at one of our neighbor's items, Grace turns to Mike and says to him, "Is this on sale?  Can we get this?"  If you're reading this, you probably know Mike and I well and know that we rarely buy anything that is not on sale.  Oh, she's learning well from us :)

Finally.

I actually think I'm done with Easter pictures after this post.  It only took me a week and a half :)

So here's my little guy looking all manly in his cute red plaid outfit I bought him for Easter.  Of course, up until three days before Easter, I continually said I was not going to buy any of my kids Easter outfits (I never have in the past and thought "Why start now?")  But I caved when I found the girls cute dresses and this outfit for Tyler. 

Here's my two favorites from the day.

First Easter.

I promise I'm almost done with the Easter posts.  I realized yesterday that none of the blog posts about our Easter showed any pictures of our newest member.  Here's one picture as a placeholder until I can get more posted of our little guy.

Continued.

Easter at our house continued into the week following Easter thanks to the delivery of these wonderful Easter baskets from Uncle Mark and Aunt Katie.  Uncle Mark and Aunt Katie bought these for the girls when they were in the Bahamas earlier this year and saved them for Easter.  Claire received a Hello Kitty basket and Grace got a Dora one.  It's a good thing their names were stitched on the back or we may have had some pickering over who received which basket!

We let the girls dig into them right after dinner one night.  Within seconds the girls were dumping out all the treats from their baskets and shaking the eggs.

Love Claire's look of excitement over what she was finding!

And how appropriate that Grace was wearing her Dora pajamas when we opened the gifts!

Now what to choose for dessert?

Super cute Easter baskets.

Will hopefully be back later today to explain and post more pictures, but for now. . .

Easter morning.

This year I copied one of my neighbor's ideas and decided to tell the girls that the Easter bunny would come while we were at church.  So the night before I hid half of the Easter eggs upstairs in our bonus room and the remaining half I hid downstairs after we got the girls loaded in the van for church.  It worked great so I'm thinking this will become a tradition!

Here's the girls' Easter baskets right before they got into them . . .

Let the fun begin. . .

Okay, time for the egg hunt.  Grace found her eggs with no time to spare for pictures, so here's Claire enjoying the hunt.

Oops, apparently the Easter Bunny forgot to fill an egg.  Love Claire's expression of disbelief. . .

Finally, time to check out the loot. . .

I think the biggest hit of the day were the chocolote covered marshmellow eggs from Grandma. . .

Can you tell we enjoyed Easter at our house?

Egg hunt.

I'm days behind on posting to the blog.  The weather has been so nice here that we've been spending a lot of time outside.  So when I'm actually inside, I'm trying to keep the house together and tackle laundry (a never ending battle in this house).  I have three blogs that I'd like to get posted about Easter, so hopefully I can get all of them up in the next few days. 

We had a great Easter weekend at our house.  It started with an egg hunt at our preschool on Saturday morning.  The only time it rained here this weekend was Saturday morning, so the egg hunt was indoors, but the kids did not mind (I guess I should really say 'kid' as Claire did not stay long enough for the egg hunt). 

Before the egg hunt, there were craft tables set up in the fellowship hall.  

And then Grace (this is when Claire and Grandma made their exit) got to become an archeologist and was given a digging kit to dig up symbols of Jesus' life.

The actual egg hunt was a little chaotic, so pictures were almost impossible to get of that.  I'm sure you can imagine kids age 4 through 7 running from room to room looking for eggs. 

Happy Easter.

A friend.

Here is Tyler with his first friend, Christopher.  While their sisters played in our driveway this afternoon, they just chilled in the garage.