Four-tunate Mom

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday, 3/31/13 - to see Easter Sunday 2012, click here Easter Sunday 2012

Well... we made it out the door, everyone was dressed, hair was done (only one I would have done differently was Lydia)... but with no time to spare for pictures :( So here I am snapping away at church. We opted to sit in the way-back, with the folding chairs... good choice for us. :)

LeaAnn climbed all over the place, we had the section basically to ourselves... so we actually got to pay attention this week! :D

Girls' dresses are from Mimi... we found them at the consignment shop in Cedar Rapids!

And I adored their hair! Can't wait to try it again... and I told Lauren she could learn and fix my hair like this too! It's called the pancake-lace-braid (click here to see the video - Cute girls hairstyles ~ pancake-lace-braid)

I tried to do the same thing with Lydia's hair, but her part goes the opposite way and I was in a hurry. We did OK... I'd like to try again.

And... never did get a picture of just these two in the matching dresses :) These were as good as it got.

Imagine that... Lydia not cooperating :)

So here I am begging her to smile.

Lydia faces, through and through!!

After church we headed to Grammy's... love this picture of these two :)
Click here to see Family Easter 2012 - Family Easter 2012

one more for the record ;)

Look who was being a ham :)

Chris had already run upstairs ... but I caught him, so he had to come back downstairs for a family photo.

I think we should have sat :) but this is relatively good of all the girls...

Jill and the kids drove up... Eric was working and the Larson's are a week away (less than!) from moving into their new house!!! :) So they could not afford to waste any precious time on getting things done. Here are Miles & Syd playing with letters. They LOVE letters... they know. them. ALL. What?!? Not even sure LeaAnn knows A from B ;)

2-3months. SO cute :)

I especially love this one of Miles :D

It was a picnic lunch as you pleased. Ham, rolls, fruit and cinnamon rolls... YUM!

The big kids were still out walking...

And after they ate... on to the egg hunt. Though windy and cool... we still had a great time.

Sydney had other plans :)

She wanted to swing!!! :)

LeaAnn kept saying, "find anoder one?"

Love Miles' face here...

Back inside... b/c it was pretty chilly... Grammy showed us pictures and told us stories from her Vietnam biking trip! Such cool pictures... really amazing. And she bought each one of the grandkids an authentic hat! Kids wore them all the time there...

She wants a group shot with all 11 of them... I suggested maybe we could at the Soloth reunion :)

Oh the three littles... there not so little anymore!!! :D

cute, cute!

look at the one from last year!!! Can someone please tell me how this is possible... amazing.

I also found one of Lydia last year with a passi in her mouth!! Wonderful time, definitely missed the Larson's, and hope that next Easter is warmer :D

Easter weekend

Thursday, 3/28/13

Frankie Clare Dolan's 8th birthday! Sara & Frankie came up with this wonderful idea of having a salon/spa day at Studio 301 in Manchester. The girls got their hair, makeup and toenails done :) super fun & they had a blast. I knew we had to leave at 9:15... but I thought we were just going up the road to Frankie's HOUSE, not to Manchester... whew! Good thing Lauren pointed that out! ;)

As we were on our way I realized... oh, is it going to be worth driving all the way home and back again? We needed to get water filters from Hausers and an estimate from J's Auto for the back bumper... probably not. So we did all of those things, plus try to go to a park (but it was still just too chilly outside) so we went to the consignment shop and scored :D (bathing suits for the girls, jeans for me and a Justice outfit for Lindsay... learned my lesson, bought the too-expensive leggings to go with the top b/c they MATCH ;)

Also, during our errand run I also decided... I can, and will, take them out to lunch :) We never do! We ended up agreeing on Burger King (which to my knowledge I've never been with the kids) and it was perfect! Would definitely go back again.... b/c instead of that dinky toy... you can choose ice cream! $3.50 for lunch + dessert :) deemed it worth it to me (b/c I knew I'd get some of the ice cream ;)

As we were sitting in BK I realized how cute they were being and how cute they looked... and realized, "oh yes! I have a camera on. my. phone.!" What an ingenious idea ;) So I started snapping away...

I know, I know... but she looked so cute!! so big...(sigh)

And speaking of 'so big'... wow :)

the little girls busy looking at the worker cleaning up the mess Wiam made. (shocking!)

Again, necessary to have a series of pictures of LeaAnn eating a hamburger??? Probably not. But why? Because I can. :D

trying without holding...

decided to hold the cup of ketchup :)

checking it out..

going in for the bite!

It was a perfect lunch really... I even got to sit and eat :)

Friday, 3/29/13
The day started out with a 12-mile (!!!) run with Maggie & Maria. Yup. 12. I KNEW that Maria was going to say, "let's just make it 11" (we were supposed to just do 10) and I needed 12.1 to make 300-miles total for the year (end of March and I had planned to run 2.1 on Saturday morning). So... that's what we did. :D It felt great, and I'm pretty sure I could have kept going... as we were climbing the hill to the hospital at the end of our run I said, "is this what it feels like... when you are numb and you just keep running?" Sorta like Forest Gump ;) you just keep running, and running, and running... All the kids were with Becca Werner at Maggie's house, we ate lunch there, came home, showered & crashed. Woke up and the big girls had been in and out playing and decided that we should all go throw rocks in the creek :) Here's our walk. COMPLETE Wiam face ;)

Walking down and back did my legs good... and I even managed to go to Walmart that evening after supper to eliminate that from the 'to-do' list for the weekend... woke up on Saturday feeling A-OK!

Saturday, 3/30/13
Our first experience with the Winthrop egg-hunt at the Winthrop golf-course. I thought we were going to be outside the whole time... not so much ;) They have a ton of cool inside activities for the kids to do! Like making this color-cotton-ball craft...

decorating cupcakes :)

and guessing how many jelly-beans in a jar, coloring, more crafts... very impressed. They had several door prizes that they drew names out of a hat for too.

How cute is this!!?? Lindsay with one of her BEST buds, Will Hansen! So cute, need to print this one off...

And THEN we went outside for the egg hunt. They were allowed to gather 10 eggs and 1 of them could have a piece of paper inside. The rest had candy. The piece of paper had a prize written on it.. a kite, bubbles, chalk, etc.

Love Mr. Kael's look here :)

Maggie said, "Lydia looks so different... oh! it's b/c she's wearing jeans!" King-dad was over-the-top happy that all his girls had pants on for the day ;)

Poor Easter Bunny... all the little people were scared of him :) must have been his eyelashes... they were a tad creepy looking!!

Great time overall... will definitely go back again next year!

our week with Mimi (forgot one ;)

Monday, 3/18/13

I forgot that I had grabbed my big camera at the beginning of the week! I tried to delete a picture, but I could not! All the pictures were too cute. Love Lydia giving it 'her all' ;)