Easter Fun

I feel like since I've entered adulthood most of the time the holidays sneak up on me. It's like I go to sleep on Valentine's Day and wake up the next day and it's already Christmas. Somehow, I miss my chance to do all the fun things I had in mind and it's come and gone before I really gave it a place to rest in my life.

This year, however, Easter seemed to be my exception!

We did LOTS of things to celebrate the fun, frivolous side of the Easter season.

Story Time at the Library
We had the great fortune of discovering toddler story time when Grandma Breakall was here for Ammely's birthday. They have a theme every week with music, and activities and stories and crafts - all in 30 minutes! We liked it so much that we've been back every week since!

The couple of weeks leading up to Easter, we learned about Bunny Rabbits and Chickens/Eggs.

Passport to Discovery in Queen Creek

Queen Creek hosted quite the event the weekend before Easter weekend: Passport to Discovery. They had egg hunts and the Easter bunny. They had music and talent shows. They had crafts. They had food vendors. They had train rides and bouncy houses. It seemed like too much fun to pass up. So we did not. 

This was Ammely's very first Easter egg hunt - and she did pretty well. 

However, she was not so fond of the Easter bunny. That's okay. I'm not really sure what the Easter bunny is all about anyhow. I'm also not sure that I'm not a little scared of him too.

She DID like coloring with Daddy.

In fact, I"m pretty sure she likes to do just about anything with her Daddy.

Egg Dying

This is one of my personal favorites when it comes to Easter traditions. Again, it was another first for Ammely and I think one of her favorites too (especially since she now drags me to the fridge daily and tries to pull out the egg carton and asks for "colors"...sigh). Have I mentioned before that this girl loves to color? She loves to color. This was no exception.

Speaking of things I've mentioned before - do you see how much this girl loves her Daddy? He's pretty fond of her too.

Look how hard they're working.

Ammely noticed that Ammon would blow on the eggs. She did not notice that he did it AFTER they came out of the dye to help with the drying process. Ha!

All that hard work paid off for the both of them. Do you see that look of surprise and joy on Ammely's face at finding that another egg came out pretty?

And Daddy's little girl could tell what he had made for her too...

Egg Hunt (and dinner) with the Cousins

This was yet another raving success. The only drawback was that we were missing one cousin. Rori was off having other fun, family adventures. Hopefully she'll join us next year.

Here we are, receiving very important instructions from Aunt Amber. 

We all get 12 eggs. Count that out. Twelve. 

We also do not run over Ammely and Samuel in our enthusiasm for hunting.

Now, go!

We LOVE Uncle Kent. He is always SO mindful of Ammely and helped her find many, many eggs - when she'd pay attention to him that is. We're so very glad that he has a little girl with a little finger to be wrapped around now too - and even more glad that he still gives us lots of loving attention even though he has a princess of his own!

And LOOK at all that LOOT! Whoa.

Speaking of loot - I somehow managed to not take a single picture of dinner. We had fajitas. And they were to die for. Seriously. They were SO good and there was more than enough to go around. Chicken. Shrimp. Steak. Oh my heaven. - yet another reason we love Uncle Kent.

Easter Day Surprises

Easter morning dawned on us and we got Ammely all spiffied up in her Easter dress. Then we set her loose. She had a trail of Easter eggs to find....from her bedroom door, down the hall, down the stairs and to the table.

This video shows her hunting eggs down the stairs. Feel free to watch it and hopefully it works. However, we had some music on Pandora during our egg hunt and YouTube apparently knows this. So they won't let me post the video for copyright reasons unless I take out the audio...which I did not want to do.

Her trail of eggs ended here:

Did she love it you ask? Meh. She loved her egg hunt. She loved her eggs. She loved her candy. When she finally realized the basket was there then she was happy. With the candy.

It wasn't until much later that she started to get into her basket and discover other things...like books and necklaces.

We let the morning pass and then freshened up for some Easter pictures before heading to church. She had to have her friends with her. Silly girl.

That night we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Lords for a wonderful Easter ham dinner. Again, I managed to take no pictures. Dinner was scrumptious. And Ammely got more Easter surprises from Grandma and Grandpa AND from Aunt Tammy. However, I started having some cramping-like pain which made me a bit nervous. And Ammely started to get a runny nose...and cranky...and a fever. So we went home earlier than normal to get everybody in bed and all healed up.Which thankfully only took a day or two.

Happy, Glorious Easter to you and yours
We had fun this Easter. We made a lot of good memories. I look forward to the coming years when we can more successfully teach Ammely about the real reason that this season is so beautiful. My attempts at that seemed to fall on squiggly, wiggly ears with a 30-second attention span.

But if you made it this far in the post then I know that you have the attention span necessary to reflect a moment on the supreme miracles our Savior worked on our behalf at the end of his mortal life. I hope you join me for a moment to do just that.

Little Helper

Ammely is a big helper. We love it. We love her.

Just Keep Swimming

Here in Arizona, Spring is on the calendar and Summer is in the air (we had highs at 97 this week!). Combine the warming weather, the family/friend pools and your curious toddler and you come out pretty certain that swimming lessons are important. Add in the fact that the electric company was sponsoring some FREE classes in Chandler and you come out pretty certain that swimming lessons are possible. 

And so I nervously signed up my child for swimming lessons. Nervous for Ammely? Not so much. Nervous for me? Yes. Yes indeed.
Swimming is not a strength for Miss Ammely's parents. We both can doggy paddle and get to the side of a pool pretty well. Drop us in the middle of a lake though - pretty sure we'll make it a yard or two and sink to the bottom. So I was half sure the swim instructor would have to continually rescue ME and my child as she tried to teach a class full of tots how to swim. Plus, I'm pregnant. It's pretty tricky to feel good about being seen in a swimming suit EVER, but it's especially painful when you're an ever-expanding mass of humans. Oh well. The sacrifices of motherhood.

But how bad could it be? It was only two weeks! So we took that first big step and got in the water.

It wasn't so bad at all! We practiced our bubbles.
Here she is with her Swim Teacher, Carly.

She even became the star pupil at doing "star fish".

But then things got less comfortable for our two-year old...scary, even. We went all the way under for the first time.

And tried back floating. She was really not so fond of these past two endeavors.
Ammon's commentary here is pretty fantastic.

But we kept going. Even Daddy got in to show her the ropes once!
And just look at that progress already! MUCH more comfortable on her back with Daddy. Aren't Daddy's just so safe?

She just kept getting better.
Counting down to jumping in.

It wasn't all sunshine, however. In fact, we had one day that was downright cold. Which translated into downright miserable.Which meant we had only a few minutes of cooperation and a lot of minutes of huddling for warmth and comfort.

And lots of layers in the car on the way home. And of course, after swimming snacks! (Usually apples).

The look on her face after swimming lessons always made us partly amused and partly sympathetic. It was the "My parents just tried to kill me and I barely survived" look.

She DID survive though and we're so glad she did. By the last lesson she had made all kinds of improvement and was doing things she refused to even try in the beginning.

Like floating on her back.

And kicking. And holding onto the wall.

And in the end she got to walk away with get carried away with her very first diploma!

It was a success. I will certainly be looking for more deals on future swimming lessons and am eagerly counting down the days until the non-heated pools at our disposal are warm enough to play and practice in. Perhaps our little girl will have more of a gift for swimming than her folks.

She's Two! And It's Not All Terrible.

Our baby is not a baby anymore - she's officially a two-year old. I can hardly believe how grown up she's gotten in such a short time. This post is to show you her two-year old pictures. More than that though, I'd like to write down a few of the things she's been up to so that they're recorded somewhere. I'm not so good at journaling anymore and my memory is terrible! (What time was she born? How long was she? I SERIOUSLY could not remember these things).

First Word: "Thank You" which sounds more like "Gonk Goo"

First Sentence: "Uh-oh, where baby go?" (In search of her baby doll)

She recently has thrown on the name at the end of saying thank you. "Gonk goo Mommy" "Gonk Goo Dada" - it melts my heart every time.

She calls her Grandmas "Ba Ba"

She is showing signs of becoming a clean-freak. She gets very upset when her hands are dirty "Hands! Dirty!" and won't be content until we wash her up. She also likes to place her toys in a neat row while she is playing with them and is usually very eager to help clean up her toys when we're done playing (putting everything in its very proper place). While taking her two-year old pictures there were some boxes they used as props (see the last few pictures below). She unstacked them and laid them out in a neat row. After she had opened one, she would not do anything else for us until the lid was securely back on top - something she needed help with.

She loves to be outside. More than anyone I know. Her very favorite things to do are to help Daddy water the trees and to go to the park and swing.

She knows many of her letters by sight and can pick them out in a book or with her puzzles/magnets.

She knows most of her colors (yellow and purple are her favorite, green she refuses to say).

Her favorite shape is a circle "girkle"

She has always loved music and has been dancing enthusiastically for months. However, she has also recently started to sing. She is quite good at Frozen's "Let it Go" and the old time favorite "Ginkle Ginkle Ginkle" more commonly known as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

She loves to play the piano with Daddy.

She likes to help Mommy sweep the kitchen.

She likes to help Mommy push the button - on the dishwasher and washing machine/dryer especially.

She LOVES to color. She wants to color all of the time. With anything. And anywhere. I've become much smarter the past few months on how and where to store her colors and now that there are no surprises (on doors and walls) I love to let her color.

We still go in phases of good and bad when it comes to getting her to eat much. She'll go days where she eats great (just the other day she ate THREE hot dogs in one sitting). Then she'll go a few more days where I can hardly get anything into her. Most of the time I don't worry. I know she is tiny for her age, but so was I. And her clothes and shoes tell me that she IS growing.

Her favorite foods are popcorn, ice cream, cheese, sweet pickles, applesauce and cereal.

Her favorite shows are Barney, Baby Einstein and Care Bears.

The first movie she sat through in the theater was Frozen when we saw it the second time (it was me, Ammon and Ammely).

She loves her cousins...even though she is still learning how to share and play nice with others. She is very happy to run around with the other kids and asks for them often. And she eats better when she them eating.

She is becoming quite sensitive - she will get sad and need hugs if there is a sad part in a show (like when Mufasa dies on The Lion King or when Anna freezes at the end of Frozen?

She likes to be in the water - bath, shower or pool.

She has many hand gestures to go with her animal noises - like snapping her forefinger and thumb together for "tweet tweets" (birds) or holding her hand to her mouth while she makes the elephant sound. Her favorite animal is the Lion.

She has started to say a few things in Russian without prompting - something that makes her Daddy very happy. She will ask  him to get down in Russian and just yesterday she asked him for a drink in Russian.

She has an impressive tolerance for sour things - she likes sour candies and really enjoys things with a strong vinegar flavor.

She FINALLY sleeps in her own room the whole night through. No more Ammely on our bed or floor at 2 in the morning. For both nap times and bedtimes we can at last just lay her in her bed and wave good bye to her. She is an angel and I love it. I truly think switching her to a big girl bed in a brand new room made all of the difference for her.

We've started coaching her through her own prayers at night. It is precious. She is precious.

I sure love this girl of mine and love being her Mommy. She keeps me on my toes and brings me more joyful moments than I could have ever imagined.

Here she is in all of her two-year old glory: