Color, color, everywhere!

This week I let Drew finger paint for the first time. Initially he wasn't sure if it was ok to get the paint all over his hands, but by the end he was covered in paint and loving it! He's asked me every day since if he can go outside and paint again. I can't say that I blame him. After all, few things are better than feeling that cool paint squish between your fingers. :)

Easter

We usually spend Easter with Nathan's family, but this year, his parents were out of town (out of country? New Zealand), so we decided to host and had so much fun doing so! We had a small brunch with Nathan's sister Kim, her hubby Dana, and Nathan's Grandma and Aunt Karen. Kim and Dana made some pretty amazing eggs benedict and Aunt Karen and Grandma brought the most delicious and chewy brownies and sliced fruit. Add this to the things we had made, and we had ourselves a feast! It was the first time I have been able to use our china since we got married, and as silly as it may seem, I was super excited about this. We also had an Easter egg hunt for Drew and after last week's hunt with playgroup, he was practiced, ready, and excited to go find those little eggies!

I was going to skip dying Easter eggs this year because I figured Drew was too young. At the last minute I changed my mind and Saturday afternoon was spent dying eggs. Drew got a kick out of it and loved having Uncle Burkie here to help him!

Our egg dying supervisor

Bunnies! Seeing as how the china finally got to make an appearance, fun napkins seemed like a must.

The coconut cake. This is the only food picture I managed to snag, but I have to post it. There's a huge story behind this bad boy, but it's long, so let's just say it involved a real coconut, plenty of work and Nathan digging himself one very large hole. ;) In any case, it turned out fabulously! Right, Nathan??

Auntie Ann, do you recognize his Easter basket?? He refused to use the one he got for Easter, instead he insisted he needed the the Auntie Ann truck basket. :)

Aunt Karen and Justin Bieber, eh hem, I mean Collin. (Really, Auntie Christi, his hair is out of control!)

I would love to know what he was telling his GGma here

Love Dana's face!

And of course, the second everyone left, so did his clothes! (Thanks Lala and Poppi for all those new fun sand toys!)

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Where are these months going?? It's already the third Thursday (ok....Friday this month, I'm late).  Sooo, three things about my silly munchkins:

Drewski

1. If he doesn’t get his way, he now tells you someone else told him he could. For example, if I say no to something, he'll tell me, “Well my daddy said yes”.

2. He likes to play tricks on us. "Hey daddy, find my pony." He giggles away while daddy goes on the hunt. All the while, he has his pony hidden underneath him. We’ve caught onto this game now, but we  didn’t at first.

3. He now repeats lines of movies that he thought were funny. Usually this happens while we're driving in the car. He also sings and dances to everything.

And a 4th, (just because!): Has been calling me "lady". As in “Hey lady! Come build with me.” Or “I sorry Lady Momma.” Not sure how I feel about this one.

Collin: 

1. Makes plenty of sounds now. The latest being "Dadadadadadaaaaa...". I'm hoping this turns into a very clear "Dada" so that when Collin wakes up in the morning, I can tell Nathan that Collin is specifically asking that he be the one that has to crawl out of bed to go play at 6 am. ;)

2. Is pretty confident standing up while holding onto something. He's even started to try and walk along the edges of things.

3. Has figured out how to climb into little things like the vibrating chair. Unfortunately, he has also learned the hard way that it's fairly easy to topple out.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program. :)

Every Tuesday morning we head out to the park for playgroup. We have a great group of moms and Drew loves the time he gets with all his friends. This week since it was so close to Easter, we had an Easter egg hunt for everyone. We had done this last year at home with Drew, but like Christmas and many other holidays, he only sort of understood it. This year however, he has eagerly looked forward to and been excited about each holiday as it's come up. This excitement, coupled with the fact that all his friends were there and excited as well, made for a very wild and fun day. (I'm sure the fact that Drew consumed half his weight in chocolate might have played a small role in the "wild"). A big thanks to our friend Jen for setting it all up and organizing! 

Ready...

Set...

GO!!!

About half way through, I noticed that Drew's basket wasn't as full as most of the other kids'. I thought maybe he was just being slow to pick up eggs. As I watched him though, I realized that he would run, pick up an egg, look at it, and if it wasn't blue, put it back down. He picked up probably three times as many eggs as he actually had in his basket, but he would only keep the blue ones. 

Everyone checking out their goodies!

Happy Easter!!

"The angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said." Matthew 28:5-6

Spring has sprung

Ahhhh, spring, if I didn't realize you were here before, I do now! How you ask, do I know this? Well certainly the longer daylight hours are nice, as is the pleasantly warm weather and the blooming flowers everywhere, but no, these things were not what announced spring's arrival in our house. It was this:

Sword fighting

Golfing

Mini horse-back-riding

Yep, these days my barometer for seasons seems to be the amount of clothing worn by a certain little Sloan running around this house. Seriously. It's become a running joke among our friends. Drew never wants to wear his clothes! If there is even an inkling of sun out his clothes are left in a pile on the back porch as he walks out the door to go play. When he first started doing this, I would go out and re-dress him, only to have him undress again at lightning speed as soon as I turned my back. It was a pointless game. Drew 1, Mommy 0. I've given up. So consider this your fair warning. From now until the end of summer the only thing you'll be seeing is that kid's hiney. Good thing it's cute!

I do actually have one, yep one (I wasn't exaggerating when I said he never wears clothes) picture of Drew this week where he is at least wearing something. My horseback riding instructor from when I was younger gave this to Drew when he was first born. He finally fits in it and loves it! It's his "Woody" (from the Disney movie Toy Story) bathrobe. I just love the little boots!! :)

Since Collin actually wears his clothing, I have quite a few more pictures of him this week. He's still up to the same shennanagins, just getting better at them. He's taken a few pretty good spills as he's been trying to figure out how to stand and walk along the furniture, but so far he's only come away with a small bruise at the top of his nose. He is definitely busy these days!

My not-so-helpful "helper" in the kitchen

Bed head. I'm thinking it's about time for a haircut (hint, hint Auntie Christi! I think a visit is in order!!)

And finally, it's my dad's birthday today. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPPI!!!! We love you!!!

A week in the life of little Sloans

This week has been a fairly mellow week for us. Lots of playing outside and hanging out with friends, but for the most part, sticking around home. We did go for a long bike ride with Auntie Kim and Uncle Dana over the weekend, which was fun. I heard rumor after our ride though, that Kim is declaring Nathan was on a mission to try and kill her off in order to gain her half of the inheritance. There may be good reason for this rumor, as our ride was a wee bit long. Not only was it long, Kim ended up working quite a bit harder than the rest of us, thanks to the low tire she rode with on a borrowed bike from Nathan for almost the entire ride (!) before any of us noticed it was actually flat. (Kimmie, we just wanted to make sure you really appreciated your bike once it was out of the shop again!). Thank goodness for good company, because all small catastrophes aside, we had a laughable and enjoyable day!

Uncle Dana and Auntie Kim. (Not to worry, Collin wore a helmet too. He's just not as enthusiastic about his as Drew is, so when we stop he gets to take it off).

The rest of our week looked something like this:

Collin has learned to make anything and everything a drum...

has taken it upon himself to climb up onto any basket, box, or item that is left anywhere within his general vicinity...

and has declared the fireplace hearth his official "go-to" spot. It is now the place he takes all of his toys (and stolen remote controls). He will also just sit there with nothing and watch us or laugh at his reflection in the fireplace glass. Goober.

Drew has decided that picking out his own clothes (or at the very least, the things that go with them) is a must...

has brought the alphabet puzzle out from the abyss of his closet to take apart and put back together over and over and over again throughout the week...

has spent quite a bit of time outside...

and has just about mastered the art of riding a trike! 

My dad likes to tease that we take way more pictures of the boys than he and my mom ever did of all of us girls combined. That may be so, but I will say, that digital cameras make it so easy to just click away. It's instant gratification that's totally worth every hard drive we've had to purchase so I can fill it up with endless amounts of photos. Besides, I'd be willing to bet if you asked my dad, he'd probably tell you that as nutty as it may seem to always have my camera on hand, he's actually thankful I take as many pictures as I do, so he can see his grandbabies on a somewhat weekly basis. :)