Easter (finally)

We dyed Easter eggs with our friends Abby and Nathan.


Then had a picnic and ate some of those eggs!


Then later that same day, we dyed our hollowed out eggs at home since we had to be very careful not to break them!



My mom's group had a hunt the Thursday before Easter. It was extremely chilly and windy that day.



Here are the girls filling up our cascarones (using the hollowed out egg shells) with birdseed and then gluing tissue paper on top to hold the birdseed inside.

And here they are smashing them on the Saturday before Easter!



Easter morning. We love our Peeps!!



Sweet sisters posing in their adorable Easter outfits



The egg hunt that we had at the Sturgis's house.

Looking at all their loot with the Grant boys (minus one of the twins)

Taking a wild ride on the hammock.

Half-Birthday

Yesterday was the girls half birthday. And yesterday I did a whole long post about it. Today I came back to the computer to add a few things that I remembered, only to find that the post is suddenly and completely gone. (that wording totally sounds like Charlie and Lola) I am beyond irritated.

Three has definitely been the most interesting year so far. Some days are fantastic. Some days are far below fantastic. Yesterday was far far below. Not sure why either. Both girls were just off. Lots of drama, attitude, and crying.

My friend Erica came over this week and she summed it up by noting that Brooke is very expressive and certainly has a flair for the dramatic. Everything is drama-filled. Lots of hands on hips. Lots of "hummmphs." Lots of NO. Lots of "well then I am not going to do ___" or an equally popular version of "then I am going to stand/stomp/scream here until ___." I feel the preteen years are going to be very trying around here. And to be fair, Audrey provides her own fair share of back talk and sassiness. Hers is just a bit less dramatic.

Now that I have that out of my system (and it really is much milder than yesterday's description as I am not in the middle of it today) I should also say that three is so super fun. They are hilarious and full of surprises and so much fun to do stuff with. The most interactive age by far.

My plan for this post was to jot down all the things that I wanted to remember about this time in our lives. My brain barely functions any more (I am grateful that I at least started out with above average intelligence since I am sure that each day I am getting slightly dumber) so this is what I have right now:

• The girls wake up between 6:15 and 7:15. They take a nap about 3 days a week. They are finally in bed between 8:15 and 9:00.
• They love to watch their little TV shows. Brooke always gets so excited to have her "morning movie" A recent addition into the rotation is Word World.
• The girls know how to spell and write their own names and spell the other's name. Brooke's writing is better than Audrey's but that is mainly because she has shown more interest and has therefore practiced more. (Audrey is too busy drawing her machines to write that much)
• They enjoy asking us to name all the words that start with a certain letter. Audrey LOVES to ask us "name all the things that start with the letter P" so that she can answer "POOP!!" She finds it so funny.
• Brooke is on a strike of the color yellow. She has decided that she does not like it and wants nothing to do with it...even eating yellow candy!
• For mother's day the girls made me cards at school that said I love my mom because... Brooke's card said because she reads me books. Audrey's card said because she gives me M&M's.
  
• We have always called Audrey our little accommodater. Recently she confirmed this. When we asked her who she wanted as her teammate she said "I pick the one that Brooke does not pick."
• They love to tell jokes right now. It always starts with "Who wants to hear a joke?" Their jokes are funny only because they are so ridiculous. The main format of the joke is "why did the ___ cross the ___" Their one real joke is "how did the duck learn to fly? he just winged it" Unfortunately they use that same punch line for all sorts of jokes that are totally not appropriate...thus the humor to me and D.
• Favorite games are Go Fish, the Egg Game, and Mommy /Daddy. Go Fish is the standard card game. The Egg Game is where we hide Easter eggs in 3 rooms and the girls hunt them. Their staging area is to wait in the bathroom - where they apparently put on shows for each other and various toys. So funny is that during the egg game frequently whenever they find eggs they say "There you are little buddy" to the eggs! And lastly the Mommy/Daddy game is when they will pretend to be either mommy or daddy or both and either one of them or some toys will be the baby. This is an extremely popular game. And let me tell you, the babies poop a ton in this game.
• They both are still obsessed with middle names and ask everyone "what your middle name is?"
• They are so cute 'reading' books now. It is amazing how well they remember specific phrases as well as the story. Currently love the Tilly and Friends little books

Finally finished

I finally finished the Christmas post - and therefore all of 2010. I can finally buy my 2010 blog book. Hooray! So if you really want to see what we did in MS for Christmas, feel free to travel back to 2010.

Misc Pictures

The girls love to draw - especially Audrey. Here is her collection of drawings of her favorite animals. (you probably have to click the picture to see them well)

Girls just wanna have fun! Brooke looks like a little 80's diva. This was her first time to wear a ponytail and it was so adorable on her.

We went to the circus and here is Audrey giving a high 5 to one of the guys on stilts. As an aside - this bunny shirt is Audrey's FAVORITE piece of clothing ever. When I went to put away the long sleeved shirts she cried and cried. So, we cut off the white part and it is now her favorite short sleeved shirt.

Pure joy doing a train down the slide with their friend Abby

Picnic-ing outside with Granddaddy before he left (after keeping the girls) We picnic outside in our front yard at least once a week. If the girls had their way we would do it at least once a day.

New York: Part 2

On Monday, we continued our bus tour but this time we did the uptown portion of the tour.


Here are my uptown touristy shots...the apple store is all glass and you can see right through it. Very cool.

We had lunch at the Carnegie Deli where they serve these grossly enormous sandwiches.


I had signed up in February for tickets to The Late Show with David Letterman and they called us in April and we got into the taping. It was very exciting because (somehow) D and I were selected to be among the 20 to 30 "cool" people that got to sit in the first two rows. We ended up in the front row directly in front of Dave's desk. His guest that night (though the taping was at 3:30) was Alec Baldwin and some random music guest that no one had heard of.


At Rockefeller Center enjoying some delicious cupcakes from Magnolia's bakery

For dinner that night we went to Red Rooster in Harlem. It is Marcus Samuelsson's (of top chef masters fame) new restaurant. It was definitely the coolest/trendiest place that we went....ie we had to wait forever for our table even though we had reservations.

But the wait was clearly worth it, as I got to get my picture taken (by his daughter) with Chevy Chase. So funny - he was wearing a baseball hat but took it off for the picture.


Tuesday was super rainy and dreary. We had planned to go to the Statue of Liberty that day, but we apparently missed getting a ticket that would actually let you go into the statue. So since it was raining and we did not want to be all huddled up on a ferry to look at the outside of the statue, we turned around and headed back up toward Central Park and the museums there. We did not get in a car during our whole trip - we did only subway and walking. We were very proud of ourselves.


On the way to the museums, we came upon this little place for lunch. Wonderful food and drinks. During this trip D decided that he loved cappuccinos.


We went to the Guggenheim museum. Is it bad that I always think of Men In Black whenever I see the museum?



Dinner that night was at Carmine's. Food was good, but it was definitely our least favorite of the trip.


Then we went to see Rock of Ages...super fun Broadway show featuring all the best 80's rock music! It was very entertaining but did not seem very Broadway-ish.


Wednesday we took the train home. Everyone was in one piece! We brought the girls these little shirts and a stuffed green (girl) M&M that they love! Thank heavens that D insisted that we get them the same M&M. I wanted to get one yellow one. Brooke is currently anti-yellow. They have named them Emmie and Emma.