Spring Holidays

Holidays are SO much more fun with children... and now I actually have time to plan and Lily is old enough to enjoy some crafts. Here are some (and by that I mean way too many) pictures of Valentine's Day and Easter.

Lily's first time finger painting to make some valentines for her grandparents and great-grandparents. She didn't really like her hands to be messy, but she caught on and enjoyed it for a short time.

To me, Valentine's=sugar cookies. Lily loved them so much that I had to hide the container so she wouldn't keep whining for more.

My sad attempt at a Valentine's breakfast, ha ha. 

Barrett was so sweet and sent Lily and me flowers. I got a call from the office telling me that I needed to pick up a package from the office, so we went down and there they were! Plus, they were lilies. So thoughtful and romantic to include me and Lily in Valentine's with her flower.

Lily's Valentine's present was her own purse. She carried it around for days putting stuff in and pulling it back out.

Barrett and I also traded Valentine date nights with another couple and it was so nice to go out. We found a Groupon for duckpin bowling and didn't think much about the word "duckpin". Until we saw these balls.

 We were surprisingly embarrassed that we had no idea what to do. Plus we had to keep score on our own. I guess we're too used to electronics. We kept trying to nonchalantly watch other people because we noticed they were throwing 3 balls per turn instead of 2. I eventually pulled up the rules online and we figured it out. Sort of. We laughed pretty hard at ourselves and ended up having a lot of fun. We went out to dinner after to finish off the night.

We had an Easter egg hunt a few days before Easter with a couple friends in our ward. Maya and Cohen are Lily's age so we wanted to get them together for their first hunt.

All of them really enjoyed it and it was really funny watching them roam around picking up the eggs. Then when their baskets got too full they started falling out without them noticing and someone else would wander over to pick them up. It could have gone on forever with the eggs continuing to fall out.

We tried to take a picture at the end with their full baskets, and that was funny trying to get a picture with all of them holding still and somewhat looking at the camera. 

Not sure what Cohen saw in the sky, but Maya is sure loving the grass.

I love Lily's face in this picture, ha ha! She looks so annoyed that Maya is poking her.

And a good picture somewhere during the photo shoot.

It was exciting when they figured out treats were inside the eggs.

Lily's first time dyeing eggs for Easter. She liked dyeing eggs a lot more than finger painting. She got so excited putting the eggs in the dye that she practically threw them in there to watch it splash.

Lily learning to say "Wow". She would say this each time we took an egg out of the dye.

Lily's cute scribbles.

And on to Easter morning. I was so excited to give Lily her chair. She loves climbing onto chairs and now she had her own she could take anywhere. Which she definitely did. In fact, it was probably the item I was most sad about packing up and leaving in our storage unit when we moved.

  The first thing she did when she came into the room was climb on the chair.

 And then, in true Lily fashion, we had to pause so she could eat the food she found in the basket.

Then we started looking for eggs.
I'm so happy we finally caught this gesture on camera. Lily still does this all the time when we ask her where someone or something is. Now she has added "Go?" when she does it.

 She had fun looking for eggs and actually did very well finding them on her own.

This is her victory stance when she would find an egg.

And as the pictures show, holidays are way more fun when you watch kids participate in traditions for the first time. Oh man, do we love Lily! We also joined a few other couples from our ward for an Easter dinner in the park. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures. Our friend was also nice enough to buy eggs and prizes for another small egg hunt after dinner. It's always hard being away from family on holidays, but we had a great Easter with our friends this year.