Brad is hard at work getting a shed built for our riding lawnmower to reside in. It was wedged in our garage all winter and it needs to go! Brad has some awesome plans for the backyard, and it will be fun to see them take shape. Fun mainly because he does most of the grunty manual labor around here.

Today he was building walls, and Mac and Leiden wanted to help. (Notice the winter coats. It's the 30th of April. And we are SO tired of it.) Mac with a hammer? Super scary.



Leiden with a hammer? A little less scary, but somehow much more incongruous.



Mimi stayed away from hammers--perish the thought. Later in the day we were down to little jackets over long sleeves, and Mimi came out and crawled through the newly growing strawberry patch. I can't believe she crawled on her knees through the rocks, which surround the strawberry plants. --As an aside, we are excited about these strawberries. They are either everbearing or 'day neutral', because they were fruiting well into September last year. That means hopefully strawberries soon!



Mimi loves the phone, and after dropping mine, which now has a blown out speaker, she is relegated to the play phone only. She doesn't mind too much.

Ruff Ruff

Mimi is learning her animal sounds.

Spring Planting

Today was a lovely day. The sun was shining, the temps were verging on agreeable. Of course, there has been an inordinate amount of rain and low temps this spring. And more, much more, in the forecast. But today was so nice. We decided to go outside and prepare some planters for spring vegetables. They'll probably die when it freezes next week. (Grr.) Here is Mac, planting some sweet peas. She took it very seriously, wanting to know exactly where she should put the next seed.



Leiden got all excited and wanted to plant everything.



Unfortunately, watermelons will have to wait.



This was, for obvious reasons, a Mimi-less activity! She was in taking a nap!

I still take tons of pictures of Mimi. I think it has a lot to do with her currently accelerated rate of learning cute new things compared to the other two girls. She loves to draw with pens, pencils, colored pencils, markers, anything she can get her hands on. She knows markers have lids, and that they must be taken off before the marker can be used. She also tries to take off the lid of colored pencils. It's very funny to see her grip the pencil in both hands and try so hard to pull a non-existent lid off! Here she is, coloring on a book she's sitting on.



She still loves the dishwasher. I'm truly surprised she hasn't actually broken the door, yet, with all her climbing on it.



She's doing well with her body parts, with the newest learned being her belly button. See for yourself:

Peeps!

Mimi got into the leftover Peeps from Brad's birthday cake. She managed, because she's enormously tall, to reach up onto the counter and get down the gallon size bag I was keeping them in. She dumped the boxes out, and went for the blue!



I stood in the kitchen, and said, "Mimi, come here." She immediately went the opposite direction, so I ran to head her off and got this.



She must think this is so awesome. See the little bite taken out of the end one?



I managed to get the set of three away from her. Just left with the two in her left hand, now. Stuffing them in her mouth as she goes.



Mischief? What do you mean?

Blowing Bubbles

Mimi was so cute, today. She got hold of one of the girls' bubbles from Easter, and was trying so hard to blow bubbles.

Easter Sunday

Today was a lovely Easter Sunday. The girls were all decked out in their Easter dresses, and I got to wear the skirt I made myself. A little impromptu family pic taken in our back yard, with the sun right in our eyes! We get so few pictures with the whole family, it's priceless no matter what the circumstances! And we all look so nice.



Mimi looking cute with a croquet ball. (From the old set. The one I thought we didn't have. Yeah.)



Leiden looking cute with a croquet mallet. From the aforementioned set.



Mac talking--literally carrying on a conversation with no one--on her play phone.



I don't know what she was thinking.



Mommy and Mac. I love this skirt!



We had such a nice day, and for once this odd spring, it was sunny and moderately warm. A perfect Easter.

Happy Birthday, Brad!

Happy Birthday, Brad! It's the big 3-3! We did presents first thing this morning. I seriously thought inspiration struck when I thought of the big present. It was a croquet set, because I would have sworn that we did not have our old one, anymore. We do still have it. Yeah. It's still in our garage. But he liked the other presents!



Grandma sent him some shirts, which he loves to get for work. I gave him some shoes, both for church/work and work/casual. They are awesome shoes. Both. I can't believe I didn't get pictures.



As always, Brad requested a chocolate cake for the birthday finale to this evening's Easter feast with friends. He's not a huge fan of regular frosting, so I made this one chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting. Think a Hostess cupcake, or a Suzy-Q. It was just like that.



Then I topped it off with these little guys.



Here's a picture of the finished cake, in bad lighting.



He went to blow out the candles, and one of the little kids we had over for dinner beat him to it!



It was yummy cake.



I have a wonderful husband. On his birthday it is only fitting that I tell the world that he is amazing and that I love him. He makes me laugh, and he is a good father. Having several small children sometimes makes it hard to see the other adult you've promised to cherish, but I want him to know that I do see him, and that he is special to me.


I hope your birthday was as wonderful as you are. I love you, Brad!

Egg Hunts

We were kindly invited to our Bishop's house with a few other little families for brunch and an egg hunt. Mimi just cracked me up. She had no idea what was going on. We thought once we showed her that candy was in the eggs that she'd be on board, but it was not so. As always, Mimi is best viewed with a play by play.

Here she is with her little friend, who is trying to take away her tiny basket. Isabelle gets how this works.



She also gets the basket, and begins to wander off. Mimi does not appear to care. She still hasn't moved from the spot we set her down in.



Isabelle's mom, my friend Naomi, tried to help Mimi figure out what to do after giving back her little basket.



Here's where we thought we could turn the tides. Naomi helped her pick up the egg (read: handed her the egg several times until Mimi held on to it.) and tried to get her to put it in her basket.



Nope. The egg is dropped, and oh, look, a stick. All the other kids are racing around the yard, yelling, and finding eggs everywhere.



Meh, it's not as cold as it looks out here. I think I'll try to take off my coat again. Why are all these kids running around?



Oh, there's that funny little toy, again. I wonder why they wanted me to hold it.



I guess I can do that. I still don't get it.



Literally, that was it. She didn't move from her spot, and she never picked up another egg! Nor did that egg ever end up in her little basket. She just must not be cut out for egg hunts.


Leiden was all about it.



Mac found a few eggs, but what she really wanted to do was swing. I seem to have highly distractable children.



Hanging out with dad is much more fun than holding a silly egg and basket.



Leiden got quite the haul. She let me have her Cadbury cream egg.



Hopefully next year goes better for the Meems.

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny visited sometime in the night, and left the girls a few little somethings.



Even though there isn't a piece of candy in sight, Mac is happy with her load.



They seemed to be particularly excited about the little bath puffs they got. Who knew?



Where's Mimi, you ask? Oh, she's around, but we thought she was probably too little to take part this year. Maybe next.


As an update on Mac, as I do this for my own record keeping as well as keeping others in pictures, she is still doing great with potty training. For the past few days she has been waiting to do anything really yucky until she has her pull up on during nap time. Tomorrow should be interesting, as she doesn't take a nap on Sundays. Hopefully we don't have drama on our hands!

Easter Eggs

Brad took a few hours off this afternoon, and we decided to dye eggs for Easter! The girls love the process, and we ended up with some pretty eggs.



Brad tried his hand (or mouth) at blowing an egg to dye. The only problem with dyeing blown eggs is they float!



Happy Easter Week, everyone!

Potty Surprises--Good Ones!

We've got all kinds of people on the bandwagon to reinforce toilet training. Grandmere told Mac that she would send (really have me get) a surprise when Mac finally pooped in the potty. Mac said she wanted a bag of balls. So this morning, we had a big present for Mac!



Her little face is so excited.




What does one do with a bag of 100 balls? One throws them on the floor. Of course.



They are a beast to pick up--did I mention there are 100 of them? So I'm really glad Mimi is not currently able to open up the bag herself.



Way to go, Mac! Now if we can just continue!