When He Paid the Debt We Could Not Pay...

...And triumphed over the grave!"

 

 It's already Thursday so Easter is getting farther behind me.  We had a regular old Easter with egg dying, egg hunting, church, and cousins.  Oh, and as happens every few years, Easter weekend also included my birthday!  This year, it was not on Easter but the day before. 

 

On Friday night my sister and I decided to dye eggs with a Pinterest technique (well, it's older than that but she found it on Pinterest) of using food coloring and vinegar using the color combination recipes on the back of the food coloring box. 

 

 

Most of the colors turned out nice and vivid.  However, you will notice three muddled brown eggs.  Those were supposed to be pink and purple.  Eek! 

 

On Saturday we took Ben to an Easter egg hunt in Grand Forks.  The term hunt is not a very accurate word to describe this event because, as you can see, there was no hunting involved.  The kids were divided into age groups and provided with bags and they were allowed to fill their bag. 

 

When all the eggs were collected, which took about 90 seconds, the kids opened their eggs to find candy.  There were numbers in some of the eggs to correspond with bigger donated prizes, including toys and even a bicycle.  Ben got a number 2!  He had no idea what it meant but I had grand fantasies of rolling a bike out of there but it turns out there were hundreds of smaller bags filled with minor prizes and he won a dollar store pack of bubbles.  One of his cousins who hunted at a later time won pancake mix!  Weird, I know. 

Look at those eggs!  It doesn't look like it from the picture above, but there were hundreds of kids there.  I have heard horror stories about pushy parents and kids at egg hunts but I didn't see any bad behavior here even though a bike was at stake! 

Here is Ben with all those babies!  Tessa is the oldest baby by nine months and still has the least amount of hair. 

 

Here is the Easter tree I was fantasizing about making for myself a few weeks ago!  Look at all those cute ornaments!  My sister spray painted this branch with some metallic farm equipment spray paint she found in my dad's shop.  It was a nice effect. 

 

On Sunday there was a little birthday celebration for my an my cousin's daughter who turned one on March 30th.  There was someone else who would have been with us if he were still here, celebrating his 91st birthday on April 7th...my Grandpa Harold!  We shared many a birthday cake at Easter over the years. 

 

Here is a celebration full of 90's fabulosity! 

 

 

This is from the same day.  See that I am holding an Easter basket in my lovely nautical windbreaker?

 

While looking for some old birthday pictures with my grandpa I came across some old birthday and Easter pictures from the year spent in Yemen. 

 

Check out that cake!  I had that bunny cake many times. 

 

This is an Easter party for foreigners that we attended.  There is another picture of my brother with that bunny that shows it's face and it was a terrifying Easter bunny.  As is whatever that paper plate creation that is on my head. 

 

And there is our egg dying with the dye kit that travelled halfway around the globe to get to us! 

That is one serious flat of eggs!  That is also one seriously bad 1989 puffy paint t-shirt.  Yikes.  I loved it though. 

So that was Easter 2015.  It ended on a high note when Ben threw up all over the floor of the Ground Round when we were eating with my Grandma in Fargo.  Yes, you read that right.  Then it happened again in the car.  There was no buildup and no indication that anything was wrong.  He slept with a wastebasket by his bed and the next morning I woke up to him standing in the doorway of our room with the can saying "this goes in the bathroom!" then he ran down the hall and put it back in the bathroom and he was totally fine.  It was weird and happened at a very inopportune time.  Fortunately the waitress said that her son did the same thing three weeks ago and was very understanding. 

 

 

Eggs

Yesterday afternoon I was hurrying through Target when I noticed that one dozen eggs were 99 cents.  For the past few years I have just left the Easter egg dying for a visit to my parents house so I am not dealing with toddler mayhem by myself.  But for some reason, I saw those eggs, and I remembered the clearance PAWS kit that  bought a few years ago that was in the box of Easter decorations and I decided I wanted to dye eggs...TONIGHT!

As soon as we got home I started boiling the eggs.  I don't like hard boiled eggs so I don't really know the specifics about boiling them.  What I have learned is that you put the eggs in the water and then start boiling them.  I learned this the first time I boiled eggs in my apartment in law school.  I boiled the water and then put the eggs in and they all cracked!  It was bad.  But I successfully boiled these only to realize how long it takes them to cool.  Poor Ben.  He was going crazy. 

But finally...it was time to mix up the dye.  The sizzle of those little tablets as the vinegar is poured over them and the smell of vinegar in general has been part of Easter for me since I can remember.  My grandma even managed to ship us egg dying kits when we lived overseas in a country that didn't have store shelves full of Easter decorations and candy every year. 

 

 

 

 

Those are pretty nice!  I really love using those shrink wrap sleeves but with only 12 eggs I didn't want to take any away from Ben. 

 

Oh, what else...a few nights ago I removed this tiniest of tiny legos from Ben's nose with this tweezer!

 

All of a sudden I heard him crying and I was in another room so I assumed he had fallen and hit his nose but after the usual toddler post injury fuss should have passed he was still upset and kept picking at his nose.  When he said something about "stuck" I almost panicked, wondering how I was going to manage getting him to the emergency room late in the evening with Tessa already sleeping for the night.  Before I headed to the window to see which of my neighbors still had lights on I shined a light up his nostril and saw something up there.  I told him not to touch his nose again and ran for tweezers and he was so scared he just stood there.  Poor guy.  Fortunately I was able to quickly extract the lego without shoving it farther up or anything.  Crisis averted. 

Sliding Maniac

We headed out to our (aka MY) favorite toddler oriented playground in town last night now that the ground is officially dry to the point of fire weather warnings on my weather.com app.  It was fun to get back to the old warm weather routine although it wasn't without the usual toddler B.S. including Tessa repeatedly taking off in all directions, Ben getting knocked over by Tessa's baby swing twice in a row after repeated warnings to stay clear of the swing and having to drag Ben to the car mid tantrum when I decided we had to leave.  I did manage to capture this cute video though. 

 

 

She is a little one year old wild woman!  She really loves sliding.  Most kids her age love to swing but she didn't really want to swing.  She was just staring at the slides the whole time.  She does this head first thing at the Y too.  They have an indoor playhouse with a slide and she has been going down head first for a few months.  I love watching her but I also instinctively cringe after years of lifeguarding and having to fight with kids over breaking the feet first rule on the water slide!  There is no denying which way is more fun!  Head first!  Rules sure are a buzzkill!

Book Baby

Tessa is going through a book phase.  Well, I hope it is not a phase at all but a lifetime love of reading and learning like I have!  But I will just focus on the present.  Right now she loves to look at, carry around, and listen to books.  Every morning, she goes right to the little cupboard doors that hold books in the living room and empties both of them all over the floor and proceeds to spread them all over the house throughout the day.  They are under the couch, in the kitchen and everywhere else.  She has a small book in the car and taking it away from her is a fight.  She clutches it at yells "book book boooook!" when I take it away from her.  She can always be found in the reading nook at the Y when I pick her up and removing her from their is usually a fight.  And at home she is always carrying a book around and I am always on guard in case a dense little board book is launched at me followed by a little maniac toddler clawing her way into my lap. 

 

She looooooves this one...It is "Old McDonald" in book form and you count the animals on each page by popping a little plastic bubble.  Taking her away from it to put her in her room for a nap or bedtime is a very dramatic separation.  Imagine outstretched arms, shrieking and flailing. 

 

The books are paying off because she is learning new words every day.  This morning she said "doctor" for the first time and this week she has said flower, star, and tractor to name a few.  It's cute.  I am going to enjoy these early days of language.  By early days, I mean the time between when a child starts saying words and when they first repeat some obnoxious or unflattering phrase like a little parrot.  Ben's favorite was "come on!!" when he was feeling threatened or exasperated.   Imagine carrying him to bed and him wailing, "come onnnnnn!"  Hmmmm I can't imagine where he heard that! 

Easter in the House

Last week it occurred to me that Easter is less than a month away and there was not a decoration to be seen in this house!  What was to be seen was a Valentine's placemat on the dining room table and my fabulous bunting that I used for my Valentine photos back in February.  So I dragged the container of Easter delights in from the garage and Mr. No Nap McGee helped me unload everything which isn't much.  I decided I wanted to have an Easter tree or branch this year because how can a person resist a holiday where a decorated tree in the house is acceptable?  Christmas need not get all the fun.  I had in mind something like this, which is from my Pinterest Seasonal Décor board. 

We usually had one of these on our dining room/oddly placed living room table when I was a child and it was almost as fun as Christmas.  I remember buying the little ornaments at JoAnn fabrics and we always found the branch from around the farm.  However, unlike the farm, our current yard doesn't have a wooded area full of hundreds of scuzzy little volunteer trees just waiting for the job.  Here, we only have one tree in our yard because of the tiered rock walls in the back yard.  The tree isn't very big and I couldn't bear taking a branch from it just so we could keep it in a vase for a few weeks.  I feel like the Easter section at stores gets bigger every year so I assumed I could find a fake branch or pre-made tree at Hobby Lobby or a fabric store but I couldn't find anything!  I couldn't even find little ornaments anywhere!  I ended up buying a fake pussy willow branch to put in a vase which isn't at all the same.  Maybe next year I can make some ornaments or something. 

At least we have plenty of baskets and eggs to decorate with. 

 

I forgot that I bought those fun pattered and metallic eggs last year on clearance.  And I just noticed from the picture that they have holes in them!  I could turn them into ornaments! 

 

While tucking away my Valentine's Day placemat I came across stacks of unused dish towels from our wedding and decided it was time...time to rotate out a few towels...

 

I have memories of opening dish towels at my bridal showers and the women talking about how they still had towels from their weddings twenty or thirty or more years ago.  Now I can see how this happens.  Almost eight years later and this is my first time scrapping a towel and reaching into the pile.  And these haven't been used lightly.  There were many years without a dishwasher before we moved to this house. 

Goodbye, old dingy, hole filled, frayed towels with your many faded stains.  That horse one was made by my grandma.  I have a towel even older than our wedding that she gave me when I got my first apartment that still is hole and fray free.  Not all flour sacks are created equal in their durability!

Hello new blinding white towels! 

I believe that cherry towel is what would be considered a "nice towel" which you would bring out at times when people might see your kitchen!

When I was looking through the piles I found this very cute one.

 

 I will continue to hoard that one for another eight years. 

Big Sky 2015

It's already the middle of the week so I thought I better get this vacation post done before it's too far in the past to be interesting anymore.  If it is interesting at all...

Between my phone, my camera, and everyone else's phones and cameras there is a large assortment of photos and first I added the phone pictures and then my camera pictures, which put them at the top.  I arranged a few but these won't be in a very logical order.  Since I am a non-type A person I don't care about this at all but it may drive others crazy. 

We spent the night in Billings at a hotel before heading into the mountains.  This has been the tradition since I was a child and although a night at a hotel doesn't seem that exciting this night has always been a fun kick off to the trip.  There is a Fuddrucker's burger restaurant across the street from the hotel and since that place is gone from ND and was a family favorite when it was in Fargo it is always fun to eat there.  Well, this year, we were dismayed to walk up to the door and find it temporarily closed (there is another restaurant that overflows into the parking lot so it looked busy) because there had been a fire in one of the bathrooms!  So pizza delivery it was. 

That night we took the kids swimming. 

 

This hotel conveniently had a shallow wading pool and Tessa loved it.  She stood in her floaty ring and ran around the pool in circles for quite awhile. 

 

The picture below is the first glimpse of Big Sky as you drive along the highway toward the resort. 

 

It is always a thrill to see, especially on a clear day when you can see the mountain peak!

This year we had two condo units that connected to each other. It was a nice arrangement to have two kitchens, two laundry rooms and countless bathrooms.  There were five bathrooms in each house so we had 10!  What a dream!  There were also robes.  Fancy.  Here is my brother in his robe with my sister's daughter. 

Since we have the most kids we ended up sleeping in the bunk room with them.  So Ben and I shared  bunk bed.  He loved having the top bunk and I have to admit that I found something very cozy about sleeping in the little cave of a bottom bunk.  This is probably due to the nostalgia of someone who loved camp as a child and who lived in dorm situations for several years beyond the initial freshman in college experience.  Although, looking back, I don't know how we hauled our...ummm...exhausted...selves up to those top bunks in college. 

 The big event for us was Ben putting on skis for the first time!  Justin pulled him down to the base area in a sled the first morning so he could see us all in our skis and on the way he ran into a ski instructor and asked about the lift ticket policy for kids (they ski free!) and ended up signing him up for a lesson. 

I have more photos of him in his skis down below.

Here is the complex where he stayed.  It had one of the better views we have ever had  I think!

Here is a baby takeover in the kitchen.

Cousins!

Every year since Ben was only a few weeks old we have taken a picture at the base of the mountain.  They look thrilled, don't they?

The evening sun was not ideal for photos and they are kind of shadowed.  We thought hiding in front of that pillar might help. 

Children, look at the camera!

 

Our houses were filled with lovely touches.  They are pretty new and very modern.  Ours had a shuffleboard table and my aunt and uncle's had a pool table.

 

 

 

Here is my cousin and I on the first morning of skiing.  The weather was really nice this year and warm.  It was almost too warm and by the end of the week the snow melt was becoming an issue.  Personally, I don't like being outside in frigid temperatures all day so I liked this regardless of the lack of snow depth. 

 

Here is Ben and Grandpa in their matching outfits.  We had to joke about the recent "dress" controversy.  Does it look like they are wearing blue and black or gold and white?  Definitely gold and white...

 

Here we are out on the mountain at the same time!

This mountaintop bar and restaurant has been closed for a few years so it was fun to see it open again and the weather was perfect for outdoor breaks. 

Here is the little skier! 

 

We have a video from his lesson which is so cute but I can't figure out how to get it on here without a lot of work so I didn't add it.  I believe most people have seen it on Facebook or had it sent to them already anyway.  He did really good, which by three year old standards means that he didn't throw a fit, have a meltdown or get scared.  I didn't see him at his lesson but Justin observed from afar for a few minutes.  We skied with him after the lesson on our own and took him out for awhile again the next day.  I have to say that I really admire those teachers.  It is not easy lugging those little kids around! 

See that camera I am wearing strapped to me?  It's a GoPro.  Ben wore it also!  His footage is mostly me and Justin standing over him hauling him off the ground. 

Look at him go!  Skis nice and straight!  The instructor said that children don't have the strength in their legs to do stops and turns before they are four so they didn't get into that yet.  It was more about the enjoyment of skiing.  He did like it and continued to ask to go during the week. 

 

Here Ben is again on a tower of bean bag chairs in the movie lounge room upstairs.  It was a good place to it!

 

One morning I took these two out sledding.  It was uneventful except I just love the scenery. 

 

I'm still working on re-entering the real world after a week in the mountains.  At least the warm weather was waiting for us when we got home but now it is snowing today so Waaahh waaaaaah.