Easter 2011

Wonderful day of celebrating Easter with the family.

Ethan with his goodies from the Easter Bunny and after our egg hunt.

We got him a gift card, he has been such a good kid lately.

Outside our church after the service…

Then we had Easter breakfast at T’s parents after church. We got there first and started preheating the oven for the 2 casseroles that needed to bake. Little did we know that they were storing pots and pans in there!

While we baking, Ethan did his 2nd egg hunt. This year C stepped it up and hid eggs in every room! It was cute she wrote down where each one was so he would be sure to get them all! She hides our baskets, but we found them!

I made blueberry muffins, sausage balls and hash brown casserole.

Derrik couldn’t come up this year, so it was just the 5 of us and all that food! I think the breakfast worked well, we all love breakfast food! It was good that his parents didn’t have to make up a ton of the normal Easter dinner. I think they liked this, too.

We then headed over to my parents’ house to eat ‘lunch’ at 2pm. I had to immediately put in the broccoli casserole I premade in the oven to bake. I also made cupcakes.

   the 3 cute kids in their Easter outfits. Funny that E coordinated with Matt. I try to keep the colors in the family!

Egg hunt #3 Ethan finding his yellow eggs.

Ethan couldn’t find his 11th egg – it was super hard to find. The adults were searching for it, mom didn’t remember where they all were, this went on for over an hour. I kept looking here and there and so was Dan, but Dan finally found it behind the ficus tree that I had shook like twice!

cute pic of E, love his eyes here…sorry mom caught you off guard there

little Matt ate 3 cuties for dessert!

playing with their new jump ropes

Ethan totally entertained us with how he jumped so so fast! He did like 10 in a row in like 10 secs!!  He thinks this pic is so funny that I caught him in the air…

Good times and nice that it wasn’t freezing outside.

Zoo Field Trip

Ethan had a field trip to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago on Apr.15. I was signing off on the permission slip and realized I had that day off. Usually I am too busy with work to be able to chaperone anything. I was hoping I was picked as one of them. She was picking 12, so I thought my chances were good. Another plus was chaperones were free, too! E said that they drew the names out of a hat in class. He said I was the 12th one chosen! If I know my kid, he was sitting there super worried and probably started tearing up. I almost wonder if his teacher saw him and just said my name! He said it was totally fair and they held up the slip of paper with my name.

 

super windy day in Chicago- I tried to get a decent pic of the big waves on Lake Michigan

sitting with my boy on the bus

I was in charge of 2 other boys and they were ‘boy boys’

each kid was assigned an animal to write a report on, so I asked each one what their animal was so we would be sure to see it at the zoo we met up with my sister and her son and another boy from matt’s class

 

since one of the boys was “so hungry” we decided to eat lunch at like 11am and it was so cold

swinging monkeys and they were Matt’s animal –white cheeked gibbon

here is the momma with her new baby, but can’t really see the baby

one of my boys started roaring and the tiger actually woke up!

this pic pretty much sums up how the other 2 boys were slightly different than my kid. I have no idea what they were screaming about 

most of the day was spent making sure we had all 5 boys, there was always one running ahead in the buildings. 

Ethan had the king penguin

this rhino came outside right when we stopped – then the kids laughed hysterically when he peed, which was the only reason why he came outside in the cold!

 

sweet boys

kids loved this little crocodile they weren’t sure if it was real because it never moved

k had the lion finally he awoke and was prancing in front of the window

seals underwater were neat

the president was in town the day were at the zoo. We drove past three helicopters by Soldier Field and then later they flew by when we were going into the reptile house! Obama was in one of these!

me with Ethan, so happy I got to chaperone  

the 5 boys in front of Chicago skyline   

The trip home took twice as long – ugh the traffic. E’s teacher counting all the kids on the bus.

Fun day, wish it was warmer though. I felt I kept saying “get down from there” “quit climbing on that” and “stop chasing the birds” 2 of the boys had quite a fascination with any seagull or bird in their path. We had one little mishap in the bathroom when E shut the door on another kid’s fingers and locked the door! Yikes! I wasn’t down there as I was with K watching the lion for a minute. We learned that boys are not used to stalls, we made them go in the woman’s bathroom to keep an eye on them.