Hoppy Easter!

It was a great Easter! Unfortunately we slept too late to make it to church this morning. Luckily, I made it to the Good Friday service just in case. Instead we ate Peeps for breakfast. Very healthy.

Then Nan brought us Easter Dinner (that meal that southerners eat in the middle of the day).  Macaroni and cheese, green beans, potatoes and ham. Yum!! Kate filled up on the traditional Easter broccoli. What's that you say? Never heard of broccoli at Easter dinner? Yeah, me either. This is Kate.

After we ate, we dyed eggs in the cups that I've been dying eggs in since I was a little girl. Love these cups. They're only used for easter egg dying. And they smell like vinegar all year round for that very reason.  This year we found out that my aunt (Mom's sister) has the same set, and only uses them for.... decorating eggs! 

It was a beautiful, warm, and sunny day. Which makes it seem really odd that Kate chose to wear a scarf, gloves, and Valentine socks with her Easter dress.

Once again my attempts to get serious photos of the kids was met with.. well, a four year old and a (nearly) two year old.

My best "serious" shot of these two.

They were much more amenable once they had on their rabbit ears.

And also much sillier.

Sweet kids. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

The Weekend

This weekend the kids and I took a trip to Lexington. It looks like we are finally going to sell our house there, which is, of course, bittersweet.  I won't bore you with all of the crazy details of the sale, because really, I could go on and on about how nutty the process and the buyers have been.  If all goes as planned, we close Friday. It really is a fantastic house and I might be in mourning just a bit over it not actually being ours. But, now we get to start looking for a new place to make our home in Greenville, and that's pretty exciting. This next place has some big shoes to fill.

It must have a front porch that is good for picture taking.  One last picture of the front porch. I would have taken the kids out of the car to get a shot of them here, but Kate was crying about leaving our "home" and I thought maybe that wasn't the best idea. Never fear, she was making up wacky songs 30 seconds later - so not depressed the entire car ride home.

Another shot of the living room before packing. A peaceful house. Just looking at the photo gives me lots of happy. :)

 And then there is the attic. Yow. We have a lot of stuff. My job for the weekend was just to cull out the things to sell at an upcoming yard sale.  My parents deserve gold medals or stars or halos for helping us through the process of moving (and storing our garage sale stuff). I'm serious when I say that I could have clothed many of the small children in Lexington:

Thankfully some friends showed up and took a lot of this off my hands so that I was down to three large boxes in the end. You are just seeing the baby stuff here. There is at least as much miscellaneous junk we are also selling.

The kids played at Nan and Pop's. It was a windy day. Perfect for pinwheels. Of course, any time is perfect for Nan and Pop.

And Mason showed off his cup-drinking skills. What a big boy. It took Kate forever to master this, but M is a ninja at it.  Here he is drinking sweet tea from a Halloween cup. I don't support small children drinking sweet tea, but he kept asking to taste mine, and I really just wanted to eat my supper in peace.

And then it was back to Greenville for some park time on a warm March afternoon.  I'm always amazed that this exists just downtown in our new city:

The kids are huge fans of the park. There is a ton of wide open green space to run and be silly. Kate loved running down this huge hill.

And M too.There were people walking their giant lizards in the park. Yes, that seemed odd to me too. "They're really very social." Um... uh huh. Right.

I was impressed with Don's willingness to stand on a rock with these two.... you know, after the whole broken foot debacle.

And more sunshine today means the kids did more running wild in the back yard. But more importantly, they wore themselves out for bedtime!

Peeps!

In case you've been wondering if we're surviving Greenville, we are. Peeps certainly help.

Kate and Mason

 These kiddos are so much fun. It's near impossible to get a picture of the two of them together, both looking anywhere near the direction of the camera. Here's my best attempt lately. This is the only photo in a series of 5 that has Kate's face in focus. Maybe you can tell that she's jumping up and down.

They are growing like weeds, and since I've posted so little about either lately, I thought I'd fill you in.

Kate:

• Has decided she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up. She takes her dance class at school very seriously.
• Enjoys yoga at school - "smell the flowers and blow out the candle"
• Loves art - stickers, glue, markers, crayons. She's the queen of mixed media. Every candy wrapper is incorporated into a masterpiece. Every yogurt container is decorated with stickers.  Needless to say Valentine's Day (and decorating her Valentine's mailbox) was a big hit.
• Can recognize the name of every kid in her class. That's reading, right?
• Cried tonight when she asked me if the house we buy in Greenville can be made of bricks.  I assured her that wolves don't actually blow houses down.
• Likes to make "collections" of things. 
• Somehow knows the words to Mary Poppins' "Spoonful of Sugar."
• Uses adverbs better than 60% of the adult population in South Carolina.
• Says please, thank you, yes ma'am and no ma'am.
• Loves anything that sparkles or is pink.

Mason:

• Eats the tips off of markers.
• Giggles non-stop.
• Has new words every day, but consistently says things like: hold you, tum on (come on), hop up, yes ma'am, dog food, and princess (he is Kate's brother).
• Can sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but does not like singing the ABC song.
• Can count to 12.
• Throws up often.
• Loves goldfish crackers. 
• Doesn't love breakfast... unless we're serving goldfish crackers.
• Gives the best kisses ever.
• Loves to point out trucks wherever we go. We saw a "digger" the other day after school and he was squealing with delight. No, I don't know the official names of any large construction equipment.
• Knows how to push Kate's buttons.
• Thinks milk might be the single best thing ever.

Little Dare Devil

When a 21-month old disappears and you don't hear a peep out of them, you begin to get worried that they're swinging from the lights or climbing to the top of the curtains, not putting on safety gear.

I think there are a couple of things we might take from this:

1. Mason is extremely safety concious.

2. Mason takes after his Daddy.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the latter.

Mountains and Kids

Today we took a trip to Sassafras Mountain. The view was beautiful, but it was COLD!

When we got home, I attempted to get some photos of the kids.  I used to follow them around with camera in hand, but not really anymore. I guess I was feeling guilty. 

Pretty baby boy, with his short hair.

And the big girl.

All of the kids. Foster turned 9 on Friday! Where have the years gone? 

All of that car riding can get the kids a little nutty. This was taken after our trip.

Happy, these two.  Kate seemed to turn the corner last couple of weeks. She just started acting more like the Kate I knew before we left Lexington.  For a while she cried and pouted and just seemed "off" most of the time. Then slowly, school became more fun and she stopped crying every day at dropoff. Some days I actually leave her jumping and laughing and twirling.  That's a welcome change.

Valentine's Day

LOVE these sweet little cuties! So glad they both agreed to be my Valentines.

 

Old MacDonald

Up for Air

The last few weeks have been rough. All of us have been sick at some point (some more so than others) and the weather has been cold and rainy (= depressing). But we did come up for air this weekend. Kate was recovering from yet another round of the funk, but we figured she could recover in the car as well as the house, so off we went on our first mini adventure through the mountains. It is nice being close enough to enjoy them so easily. Here are some shots of our day!

First stop? A cute little waterfall.

I'm happy to report that we made it to Caeser's Head and back without breaking any bones.



Kate at the top. She was surprisingly not afraid of the height. Unlike me. Whew.

 


 Then it was on to Looking Glass Falls.

Another stop along the way.



 We took a peek at Sliding Rock. Mason loved the loud sound of rushing water. Let me say that this is not a rock I'll be sliding down.

Not entirely sure what is going on here.

 Cute boy.

 

Then it was on to the Blue Ridge Parkway, where we found some SNOW!

 The Parkway was closed, so that was the end of our trip and it was back home to Greenville. What a fun day!

 

Merry Christmas!

It hasn't really felt much like Christmas around here this year, with all of the moving in and out of hotels and now the house. But Monday that changed.  We loaded up and drove to Lexington to hang out with the Fraylicks on Christmas Eve.

Kate and Mason really cleaned up at Nan and Pop's. Seriously, we could have just stopped there.

This was our first year without Gramma, and consequently, not packed into a small house/apartment. Gramma really loved the holidays, especially Christmas. And we were always together on Christmas eve. Differences aside, she knew that the holiday was all about family, and she loved us all so dearly.  This year we celebrated at Cheryl and Kerry's. Most of us were able to make it.  We're still a pretty cool crowd.  The cousins are all grown up:

But there are a few new faces ready to bring some excitement to our gathering:

I think they enjoyed themselves.

Then we drove back to Greenville for the night, where Don created some wonderful memories of assembling an art desk at midnight. Here we are - all done and ready to head off to bed. 
 

 Kate was a little slow to wake up the next morning.

But was creating art masterpieces in no time.

The new art desk gives her plenty of space to make a mess work.

Mason? He just wanted to play with Kate's art supplies (markers). So the tables were turned. Last year she wanted all of his toys. This year he wanted all of hers. He had colored his hands orange and blue and added a beauty mark to the side of his face before we left for Hartsville.

Finally at the (other) Meredith's. Or would that be at the original Meredith's? He found a toy to love. It made truck noises and had a tool box. That's really hard to beat.

Unless, of course, there are markers.

It had been too long since we'd seen Don's parents, so it was nice to catch up.

I even got a halfway decent picture of the kids together.

 I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and were able to spend it with the people you love, and love you, the most.