VACATION - Yee Haw!

So we decided that we'd stay close to home this year and take day trips to all the places we talk about all the time.  Hm...  here it is the last day of vacation and we are still several places short (we really must get to Dinosaur Land) but all in all it was a pretty fun week.

We kicked it off with the annual Smitheroni Picnic (aka: Shaeleigh's 1/2 birthday party).  Thanks to everyone who made it out on a hot, hot day!  It was the last party with all of Shaeleigh's Simon Center classmates. 

Stand here?  Why?

K:(This is his "I'm getting ready to break loose" look. Note the eyes shifted towards the ground)

I've been trying to get Shaeleigh to work on a special project for her two teachers.  I think her heart's not in it (although I finally got what I wanted...  I think).  She's been having a bit of a tough time with the thought of going to a new school in the Fall.  I don't think it helps that she will have to wear a uniform.  It's not the least bit twirly.  Plus, she doesn't like wearing jumpers.  She likes one piece dresses or a skirt with a shirt.  She's really fairly inflexible about that too.  I can't decide whether the uniform will be a good thing or a bad thing for her.  On one hand, I like that she knows what she wants to wear and feels comfortable with her own style (heaven knows she doesn't get it from me).  But, on the other hand, I wonder if she dresses like she does because it gets her attention and I don't want to go down that road.  I will say though - the shoes are butt ugly.  There was no pretending they were cute.  I had to order them online because I couldn't find black, leather, saddle shoes, loafers or oxfords in the stores.  Note - not the cute black and white saddle shoes - all black ones.  Even Stride Rite laughed at our quest.

I do think the vacation week helped her mood.  She was pretty glum the first few days but today she was mostly smiles.

Chance, always ready to help.

So what did we do?

Well, first, we did some most excellent camping in the backyard.  The original plan was to head out to a local camp grounds but as we started to think about it, Kenn and I became exhausted and so we thought... hey, the backyard has gnats!

Kenn has promised to chime in on this posting but I think he will agree that given the number of disasters we had in our own backyard, it was best for all involved that we didn't attempt going any further.

K: No argument here, wouldn't have worked any better further from home. I had even brought a fan out to the crowded tent to make it more tolerable. It wasn't too bad!

We had planned to have a weinie roast over the "campfire" but everyone was "starving to death" by the time we got home with the charcoal so we ended up letting George Foreman join our camping trip to hurry things along a bit.  We did attempt roasting marshmallows and making s'mores which no one ate (well, a bag of Hershey Bars were consumed).  We then made some Jiffy Pop.

K: See the PJ's? Doesn't mean a darn thing.

Or not...  Seems you're suppose to remove the cardboard on the top of the Jiffy Pop thingie before you make it.  We were wondering why it was taking so long.  No matter....

K: No matter....I was looking forward to some Jiffy Pop. I kept hearing little pops and waiting for them to multiply but they never did. When I got up to check it out, I noticed there was no classic swirl of foil awaiting the heat to uncoil it. No, there was still the cardboard "Remove This Cover Before Popping" label and the smell, nay, stench of burning popping corn. Not burning popcorn, but burning corn kernals. Gnarly.

 Kenn cheated by bringing out a fan.  It was hot.   

K: As I mentioned earlier, I did this for everyone's benefit.Obviously, Shaels was enjoying it until her little bro decided to try and stick his little digits in it. Then I moved it inside the tent. Seemed like a good idea at the time....

 Once it started getting dark we commenced with the ghost stories but we didn't come adequately prepared and didn't know any.  I remembered a few good titles (The Man with the Golden Arm) but beyond that the ol' noggin' was pulling a blank. And so we made a few up but for some reason they all ended up involving unicorns and marshmallows.

K: Oh, I could come up with some stories but what these monkeys ask for is seldom what they want. Besides, the better the story the longer I would be awake assuring someone it was just a story. I dont know when to quit so I just didn't start.

Shaeleigh did check off one life goal and that was able to go swinging in the dark and then we headed off to bed.  Hahahahaha.  Okay, so we had a grand time playing with the flashlights, jumping around, giggling, growling, realizing that no one brought out a pillow for Kenn, playing with the flashlights again, some more jumping around, rolling about, nanny nanny boo-booing and finally as it was approaching 10 we decided that we would never be able to get up for the zoo early if people didn't get to sleep and so we went into the house, curled up in our beds and promised Shaeleigh we would sleep in the tent next weekend.

The zoo was good.  We had nice weather - slightly overcast but not too hot - and pretty good luck seeing the animals (no giraffes though - they are still away while they re-build the giraffe/elephant area).  That's Tai Shan above.  He was inside and the glass was filthy but it made the photo look like some old postcard with a mountain range in the background.

K: Shaeleighs whole reason for going to the zoo seemed to have been to get a new stuffed animal. That's all she asked about from the time we got there until we got her a new buddy.

The highlight of the zoo though:

We finally saw the Orangutans crossing the O Line.  The zoo has this series of cables and towers that cross over the zoo from the Orangutan house and the Orangutans can cross over them right over your head (nothing but distance stopping them from jumping down to freedom).  We've always wanted to see them cross and wondering if they really ever do or if it's just zoo hype but as we were leaving - there they were. 

These photos are terrible but it was cool.

Then we had playground day.  I took the kids to Clemenjoyntri which we never go to because, while it's an amazing playground, there's no parking and is known to be a madhouse.  Going on a weekday morning was great.  It wasn't crowded at all and the kids ran free.  Shaeleigh was having a bummer of day though so I'm not sure she completely enjoyed it.  Even riding this most excellently coifed horse barely cheered her up.

Chance rode the zebra twice.

K: Check out the new kicks, he was so proud of his new sneakers. Unfortunately, they have this seriously aggressive tread on the bottom and where he used to get away with stepping on people(literally) without inflicting too much pain, he now left marks and screeches in his wake!

This is the new move.  Shaeleigh started this one, "Look at me" and Chance has since picked it up.  Now they both go around, "Look at me, look at me."  The difference being that Shaeleigh does it in the family room at home.  Chance does it every where we go.

Buddies.

K: See that tread pattern? Was I right or what?!

Particularly with some distance between them.

Ah, Kenn found a little Box turtle and put it into a flower box until I got home with the kids.  Pea-Eye is taking a closer look.

We celebrated Kenn's b-day in style.  Shaeleigh and I put some time into putting these little plastic motorcycles together.  They had names like, "Bonda, Yazuki, and Oamaha"  hahaha.

And then it was "ROAD TRIP" to the beach!  We went for an overnighter to Chincoteague/Assateague.  We've been to Ocean City the past few years and were looking for something not too far but different.  Given that Shaeleigh is big into horses we thought she get a kick out of seeing the wild ponies.

Most of the beach photos are on a disposable camera but I took a few the day we arrived while we were waiting for our hotel room to get ready for us.

Good ol' Chance.  He wasn't keen on the water but he loved the "sandbox" as he called the beach.  He just walks up to people and starts conversations.  "What ya doin?  Diggin' a hole?" 

Father and son (sorry I cut your head off there Kenn).  They ended up dressed alike only because Chance puked on the way down and I dug this old white shirt out of the diaper bag.

Vacationing with Chance is pretty much like giving up sleep for a week.  Where he gets his energy I don't know - heaven knows he doesn't eat anything (his new phrase, "no.... I don't like that.")

We had a pack and play in the hotel room for him but he only pretended for about 30 seconds that he was actually going to sleep in that.  We tried just about everything before giving up all together.  We ended up turning out the lights with Kenn, me and Chance in one bed and Shaeleigh in the other (well, Shaeleigh and one hundred "buddies" that had made the trip).  At some point I did put Chance in the pack and play and he fell asleep.  Kenn declared me "too big" and went to sleep with Shaeleigh and the buddies. 

Long about sometime in the middle of the night, Shaeleigh woke up screaming.  She still has night terrors when she's over tired.  I don't know if this was a night terror for her or just for me but I got her too the bathroom and she started screaming about it being too dark (it was pitch black) so I turned on the light and she started screaming about it being too bright.  By this time she had peed everywhere and was just standing there screaming.  I got her cleaned up and she wanted underwear.  I had no way of finding underwear at that point so she screamed about not having underwear.  I think she finally woke up because she calmed down, crawled into bed and I heard her giggle about something before falling asleep again.

But next thing you know (I don't know what time it was but it was still dark outside and the rest of the world was still sleeping) but the little voice across the room was singing, "Mommy!  Mommy!"  I can guess it was his usual 5:30.  I brought him into bed with me hoping he will fall back to sleep.  No.  He is awake.

And then for one final adventure....  We decided that before we headed home we would spend the morning at the beach and then stop on the way out to take the 1/4 mile walk to the lighthouse.  Everyone had warned us about the mosquitos and we had come fully loaded with sprays and wipes and maximum deet but for whatever reason, it didn't occur to us that we'd need anything on the 1/4 mile walk to the light house.  Chance had managed to fall asleep (of course) on the 2 minute ride from the beach to the trail entrance so as we commenced our walk, I was carrying him.  Within the first 100 feet we started seeing the skeeters.  I passed Chance to Kenn and began waving then off his face and Shaeleigh's head.  Then suddenly it became insane.  It was like we were in the freakin' Amazon.  We were being swarmed.  We made it about 1/2 way in to the 1/4 mile and started yelling, "Abort, Abort, Abort"  I took a quick photo, picked up Shaeleigh and we ran the whole way back to the truck.  Hahahaha - Unbelievable.  Kids will have to see a lighthouse another day.

Oh, and we did see the ponies.

There's more but it's getting late.  As I mentioned.  Kenn has promised to chime in.  I'll leave the rest of the tale to him.

K: What? No picture of the Egrets? We saw a ton of them roosting in the trees . They look less goofy in flight but you'd have to see the pics to understand. There are some coming, I hope.....
Chincoteague was cool. Nice beach, minimum tourist, no boardwalk. Quaint little town too. Most of the tourists shared a couple of obvious, to me anyway, traits. 1) Most were largely overweight and 2) had trouble remembering how to ride a bike. Sheesh, the wobbling!!

Still K:Oh, and Chance got his first official "Barber Shop" haircut today.I took him where I usually get mine cut and thought that by watching the pro I might pick up few tips. Well, I didn't really see anything new but Chance was a champ. Didn't move a bit, sat still and only smiled and squirmed when Dad tickled him under the cape.Bad Dad, got the evil eye from Brian, the manager and barber brave enough to take on the boy for his first cut. Again, I was so proud of him. Out of character for me, I even tipped the guy 33% for being such a good sport! He wont be seeing that when he cuts mine next! Haha (I think he already knows that!)

Howdy!  (hm...  the margins on this blog skin cut off the right side of the photos.  Need to fix that one of these days.  Shaeleigh's sleeping head is in this picture...)

Hard to believe it's very nearly back-to-school time.  Not to mention that we actually have "back-to-school" activities to accomplish.

In my quest for a kindergarten "rest mat" that was precisely 5/8" thick, four folds and 19" x 45" I ended up ordering online.  The mat was $6.45 which made it ridiculous to pay for shipping and so we tossed in a couple of backpacks to make it worth the price.

How cute is that?  I am actually glad to have gotten these online as I'm sure we would have otherwise ended up with something commercial.  They are a bit cheesy (quality wise) but the horse has 3D hair!

Yee Haw.  So while they were sitting here Shaeleigh was trying to untangle something and shouts out "Mommy, I need help!"  Chance looks up at her and says, "I'll help you Pinderella."  A true Prince Charming.

This is The Laurie Berkner Band.  They had a special on Noggin the other night so we've been singing Laurie Berkner the past two weeks.

Chance painted this one.  He said, "I painting the Easter Bunny." 

Roooooaaaaaaaaarrrr................

Rroooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr..........

Just Kidding.

Same garden, different world.

The kids were asked to bring postcards from Around the World to school last week.  The only thing I could find handy were two postcards from Vietnam.  When Kenn went to pick them up, Chance's postcard was gone so only Shaeleigh had hers to bring home.  She didn't want to carry it so she looks at Chance and says, "Here Chance, you carry it.  It's YOUR country." 

I think this contraption represents the insides of her mind.  Wheels always turning.  Always working the situation she is.

And for the final news of the week, Chance's re-adoption paperwork was finalized this week.  This was also the paperwork for his name change.  He is now legally Chance Augustus Hieu.  We have only to re-apply for his Social Security card (since the one we have is listed in his birth name) and then we are officially done with paperwork.  Phew, between Shaeleigh and Chance, we have been doing some sort of adoption paperwork almost continually for the past six years.

Until next time..................

Greetings!  Shaeleigh went to a bowling party today for one of the kids in her class.  Big hit!  All the kids were about the same in terms of what made it fun - apparently it's mostly about picking up the giant ball.

Half the time they're all just standing there holding balls - all lined up for their turn.  50% of the time they cheered for knocking down pins and 50% of the time they had already turned their backs and were on their way to get another ball.

"I got it.  I got it myself."

I thought gutter guards were a great touch but check out the ball ramp.  Actually, I would have to say that shoving the ball down the ramp was also a top contender for the best part about bowling.

After a horrific morning for Shaels (resulting in the lose of computer priviledges for the week) she was an awesome big sister at the party.  She kept calling Chance over to help her push the ball.  Chance was good too and he could not have been more thrilled than he was when the birthday girl gave him a goodie bag.  He was so proud - just like the big kids I guess.

Chance has been talking like crazy the past few weeks.  He's been singing too which is funny.  I think what's funny is that in the past he hasn't really done much singing.  Shaeleigh was singing from the start but you couldn't really make out the words.  Chance, I've rarely heard humming a tune or anything and suddenly now he'll bust out into, "The wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town" as if he's been doing it for ages.  I'd have to say, he's been putting together some pretty big sentences lately - and some of them don't begin with "no." 

Yesterday he was down for a nap but woke up after 10 minutes.  I hear a voice shouting, "Mommy, mommy.  I awake.  I slept all night.  I slept aaaaaaaaaaalllll night." 

Yeah....  funny guy. 

Shaeleigh has traded in ballet for art class.  It was a big step since art class is two hours long and I actually drop her off (at ballet the parents just hung out outside the door in a lobby area).  The first two classes have gone well - dropping her off has been a bit sketchy (pardon my pun bwah hahahaha) but she's all smiles when I pick her up and both weeks had a really good time. 

The bigger news is that Shaeleigh is reading.  Really reading.  And of all books - she latched on with "Dick and Jane."  Shout out to Aunt Lorraine for giving her a big three volume version of the book.  I knew she was really reading when she started reading chapters that I hadn't read to her yet.  Rock on Shaels!

Never, ever turn your back on a skinny paint boy.

Not sure what was up with this but one night Shaeleigh announces that she and Chance want to eat on the floor with chopsticks because, "We're Chinese people."  I decided to just hand them the chopsticks and leave it at that.  They were laughing too hard to even try to come up with a meaningful comment.

The two of them have become quite a pair.  They've started playing together.  Well, mostly Shaeleigh has learned that Chance will pretty much do whatever she says so it's "Hey Chance, let's [insert bad idea here]"  It's fun watching seeing them buddy up though. 

Batter up.  Maybe next summer we'll need to find a t-ball team.

Happy Fourth of July!  We started out in the chairs.

But ended up huddled in a row on the driveway.  Shaeleigh initially wanted to sit in the car like last year to watch the fireworks (the neighbor street variety) but we convinced her to sit in the driveway and while she kept a tight grip on those ears, she did enjoy them.  Chance did too.

Well, there was one that sent him packing.

Phew, we went to our traditional Fourth of July adventure to Claude Moore park.  Really nice weather this year and not at all crowded.  But....  I got home just in time for naps (both kids whooped) and realized that I'd left the diaper bag in the parking lot.  Argh!  Classic Joanie move.  I drive myself nuts.  Kenn was on his way out the door so I had no choice but to pack the kids back up and go back.   Both kids were sleeping by the time I got out of the drive way.  15 minutes later we are back in the parking lot - no bag.  Argh!  So I had to wake both kids up - go into the farm museum to ask.  Luckily, the bag was there - some nice helpful person dragged it in for me.  But, both kids at this point were awake and somehow if they nap 10 minutes or 120 minutes, it's equal to them. 

But....  I will not go down without a fight.  I need my rest.  So, I let them play for half an hour and I now declared it naptime.  Chance sang for half an hour but is now sleeping.  Shaeleigh is being quiet in her room.  Today, I am lucky. 

I just loaded up my cart on the Oriental Trading Company site.  It's been awhile since I order a big box of crap, er, crafts, and the picnic is coming.  I'll have to review it later (must avoid compulsive ordering of crafts) before hitting the send button.  And so I shall catch up here....

I picked up this little robot for Chance awhile ago.  He loves robots.  Sadly, the "Destroyer" was no match for "Distructo" who pulled the head off in short order.

Kenn thought a little golf club would be fun for the kids.

Here is how the club has generally been used.  I don't think the club has had more than 10 minutes of play time yet before it is removed for improper use.

Speaking of golf - we decided to take the kids minature golfing a few weeks ago as we'd never been with them.  There is really only one course near us that's "fun" so we didn't ponder the options and headed off to Woody's where they have a mini golf course called "The Perils of the Lost Jungle."  Guess we needed a bigger clue than the name of the course provided to realize that it wasn't going to go well.  Kenn and I had even been there before so I don't know why it didn't dawn on us... hello.... Shaeleigh doesn't like the halloween store... let's all go for a big family outing to a golf course full of skeletons, monsters and creepy music.  We skipped the first hole, hit one ball on the second hole, got the third hole with the crypt that had a magic door complete with screeching noises and then had to walk out the way we came in carrying two wailing kids, apologizing to everyone as we walked over the greens (are they called "greens" in putt putt?).  Oh well.  Anyone need a $27 gift card to Woody's?  I don't imagine we'll be back for a few years.

This is how Shaeleigh wanted to dress up for Father's Day to give Kenn his presents.  Chance now does EVERYTHING Shaeleigh tells him and so he wore a semi-matching ensemble.

Funny kids.  We were eating something good and Chance was sticking out his belly saying, "Mmmm good."

And this.  Worse than usual.  Honestly, we put her to bed ON the bed with the "buddies"  Later we come in - she's on the floor (yes, she's there) with everything on top of her.

Speaking of "Mmmm good."

Well, Kenn just called.  He's heading home.  I'm going to see if the gym is open.  I'll post more "Tales of the lost Smitheronis" this evening.  Heaven knows we won't be going to see the fireworks. 

Guess who made 7 dozen cookies on Wednesday night using a big tub of Nestle's Toll House Cookie dough?  Kenn was checking phone messages yesterday when he got a strange look on his face.  It was a message from Costco informing us of the recall due to potential E-Coli contamination.  That was actually pretty nice of them since we didn't even buy our tub from Costco - guess they are just calling everyone.

At anyrate, I'm good about not letting the kids eat raw cookie dough but I must admit, when they are not looking....  I brought most of the cookies to work - the cooked ones are supposedly fine but I have to say, we have about 3 dozen left here in the house and not one has been touched since Costco called.  To quote our good friend Swiper, "Aw maaaaaaaan!"

Our first graduation...   Shaeleigh graduated from Pre-School today.  Sigh...   getting so big, so fast.

We were lucky in finding a great childcare center.  The teachers are great.  The other kids are great.  It will be hard to bring Shaeleigh somewhere else next year after four years of dropping her off at the Simon Center.   The kids are going in all different directions too.  The 17 kids in her class are going to 15 different Kindergartens. 

Here she is at the big moment.  She had apparently told everyone she was going to wear her "wedding cake" dress because I must have had a dozen people tell me that they were looking forward to seeing it.

They wore little graduation caps and each of the kids even had little messages on the top.  They even had them toss them in the air at the end.  Hahaha.  Luckily they were made of felt.

Just a corner of her classroom.  They always have artwork hanging in this corning relating to a recent theme of the week.  Shaeleigh's is the turtle  in the middle row - right above the red square on the left.

Tonight as Shaeleigh was getting ready to go to bed Kenn said, "You've come a long way Shaeleigh."  Shaeleigh replied, "You mean all the way from China?"

Check out this robin:

I don't think I've ever seen a pregnant bird before but geez this lady better go find herself a nest!  We watched her for quite awhile before she flew off.  We've already had a few robins hatch there little ones in our back yard (and they appear to have flown off safely this year - Kenn witnessed two of them perched to make their first flight). 

We had to go out and play in the rain yesterday.  We're drowning around here - rain, rain, rain!!!

Our poor garden.  Our beans, sugar peas, carrots, and mammoth sunflowers are toast.  The rain pummeled them last week and then between thunderstorms someone ate what was left of them.  Too sad.  I'm afraid our zennias didn't fair much better.  They survived the rain but last time a checked they'd been gobbled up as well.  Sigh...  I guess I'd forgotten why I've only been planting marigolds.  They don't taste good.

Shaeleigh's tribute to Adam Lambert (hahaha - just kidding)

With another season of American Idol behind us, I had been planning to get back to the gym this evening.  Sadly, I got up there at 8:20 only to learn that they close at 8:00 on Saturday night.  So instead I have decided to eat Crunch-n-Munch and get back to blogging.

Let's see...  what's been going on..... 

We've planted a lot of "stuff" this year - beans, more beans, carrots, marigolds, mammoth sunflowers (none of those little ones we had last year), some other flowers that looked good in the picture but no one can remember what they are called, and some zennias.

But they are all still just sprouting so Shael's is picking buttercups and clover.

A few week's ago I was dropping the kid's off at school and Shaeleigh's teacher asks if I can do her a favor.  I say, "sure" and she hands me a slip to sign granting permission to put on sunscreen.  Then she asks if I can do her another favor.  I say, "sure" and suddenly I've signed up to put together the class quilt.  Hm....  funny how that works.  The kids had already made the squares so I just had to stitch them together and such.  It came out pretty well (if I do say so myself) but mostly I give credit to the new sewing machine Kenn had given me for my birthday.  It did a nice little fancy stitch that gave it a nice quilt effect.  It did give me the bug to make a quilt but I am already 5 projects behind so that one is not going to get picked up.

I didn't get any really good photos - the dogs have been shedding in clumps and I couldn't find a place with decent lighting and no dog hair.

The quilt will be part of the Silent Auction that they have each year.  I'll have to see where the bidding lands.  For the record, Shaeleigh did not write her own name in her square.  The names were written in puffy paint.  Some of the names looked nice and neat and others were done by kids obviously struggling with squeezing and writing at the same time.  I asked Shaeleigh about it and she said that only people with short names got to do it themselves.  Hahaha.  Shaeleigh must have run short on time because she has a few stems without flowers.  Although she is fairly artistic, she sometimes draws as if she works in a factory.  If she's doing flowers she'll draw stem, stem, stem, stem, stem...  flower, flower, flower, flower, flower....  leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf...   It's even funnier when she draws a group of people and she makes six heads, then six bodies, then six pairs of eyes, six mouths.....  she's a nice mix of flighty and practical.

And speaking of practical.... not.  I'm not sure if he was trying to outline his foot or if he thought he could make a footprint by painting the top of his foot.  As long as he was having fun...

In a separate part of the kitchen....   Kenn made Shaeleigh a stall and fence for her horses and she was painting them.  Very Chagall.

Ah - the demise of my Mother's Day gift.  Chance had painted me a flower pot.  And in all fairness, someone much much taller (begins with "K", rhymes with "Svenn") confessed to helping him break it.  They were playing ball or something.

This one just makes me laugh.

This one too.  Chance cannot leave a pair of shoes alone.  He's also a big fan of walking around with underwear on his head (doesn't matter whose).  To spare embarrassing the entire household I'll leave those photos on the camera.

New on the language front, Chance no longer calls balls "bubbles."  He now calls all balls "soccer balls."  He has a little baseball mitt.  He calls that his, "soccer hand."  Hahaha.

A week or so ago we were in my parents' backyard and a squirrel comes hopping by.  He looked a me and said, "Daddy Look!  A LION."   I keep telling him, "Daddy is the tall one with whiskers" but honestly, if he can't tell a squirrel from a lion I am clearly just wasting my breath on the whole Mommy/Daddy thing.

Until next time...............

Still here.  As usual, been busy.  But here are some photos of the whirlwind.  He seems to have dominated the last round of pics.

And here he looked up and said, "No take picture.  No more take picture!"

Sigh........

Peeps are reaching their peak staleness.  They are pretty good today but by tomorrow they will be perfect.  If they last.

Most requested photo of the week:

The final turn.

The finished set!  Yippee!

Guess I'll need to figure out how to adjust the exposure if I'm going to be taking pictures of this all summer.

I have a ton of Easter photos but I need to fold the laundry (before I need to "fluff it" for the fourth time) but here's a few:

This was the scene at our Easter egg hunt the Saturday before Easter.  I called the community center in the morning to ask if the hunt was rain or shine.  I was told, "We are working hard to make it rain or shine."  Silly me took that to mean they were changing plans and hiding the eggs indoors.  When we got there we went inside and put our umbrellas and coats in the corner - it was pouring.  Five minutes later we see everyone lining up to go outside.  "Are ya nuts?!"  I thought.  And yes, yes they were.  Sigh.... 

But, it was a nice hunt.  Although there were tons of hunts a bit more local, we drove up to Round Hill in search of a hunt that wasn't a madhouse.  It was perfect.  Loads of eggs.  Really not that many kids and to top it off, they filled the eggs with REAL candy (Hersheys and such).  Mmmm.....

Shaeleigh was in hog heaven.  Her age group for the hunt was 2-5 so she was the "big kid" and dashed about gathering eggs every which way. 

Poor Chance.  More than slightly less enthused.  He was not fond of the rain.  It was cold too and his poor little lips started shivering. 

I think this is the only other photo I got of him on the ground before I picked him up.  Shaeleigh tossed eggs into his basket as it dangled behind my back.

He did really enjoy looking at the booty.  He loves him some chocolate.

Well, hate to say it again but poor Chance.  He worked really hard to help Shaeleigh make this gorgeous Easter dessert.  I think it was the first successful baking experience with him "helping"  - no meltdowns or huge disasters (the usual smaller ones still apply but these are anticipated and considered part of the experience).  However, when I went to take this photo he came running towards Shaeleigh and I thought he was going to put his little paws into the masterpiece so I asked Kenn to hold him while I took the picture.  Then I hear him crying, "I take picture, I take picture."  Aw...  bad Mommy.  I hurt his feeling.  He only wanted to be in the photo.  He did help so nicely afterall.  And sure enough, Kenn put him down and he ran right over to sit next to his hard work.  Sadly, he was so sad that he wouldn't smile.

And finally...   the Easter Bunny:

About two weeks ago we walked by the Easter bunny and said hello.  Unlike Santie he doesn't tend to get a line so we just waltzed in and said hello and went on our way.  No one would get any closer than 6 feet.  Then last week we were in the mall and Shaeleigh spotted stuffed chicks hanging near the exit area (where you pay for the photos) and got it into her little head that if you sit on the Easter bunny's lap, you get a free stuffed chick.  I didn't connect the dots until it was too late and I said, "sure we can see the bunny again."  Chance was shouting, "EASTER BUNNY" and running at light speed.

In the end, Chance would not sit anywhere near him.  Shaeleigh...  I think we will be able to bribe her through college with stuffy wuffs.  They were not free of course, but I was so amazed that she sat near him without an ounce of trepidation that I forked over the $2.99.  The camera folks were very nice too and let me snap several shots with my own camera (unlike "Santa's Helpers" who have been known to be a bit sensitive about such things).

Cheerio!