Happy Easter

We have had a busy couple of weeks leading up to Easter. Our Mom's group at Church decided to do an Easter Egg Hunt, so we have been busy with that. I also decided to attend the whole Triduum, which means I have been out late. I usually only attend the first 2 days of the Triduum since I take the kids in the morning to Church, but this year decided to do it all! We also had an Easter Egg Hunt today and yesterday. Wow! Busy! I am posting some pictures from last week's Easter Egg Hunt. For you to enjoy. The kids decked out in their Easter finest!
Some of the teens decided to play duck, duck, goose with the kids, while the eggs were being hidden. Gwen didn't want to and Nate was super excited to play. He totally didn't understand and ran every time someone said "goose". He as usual brought smiles and laughs to everyone there!
Nate getting some eggs, he is pretty good at it now!
The kids seem to be having a good Easter, we will be eating early afternoon and they are SO excited to eat more candy and they seem pretty happy with their puzzles and new game. Happy Easter everyone.

The marathon

The epic battle, potty training. It is not that terrible, the problem is that while I have a urgency to get done with the potty training, Nate doesn't care, he is 2 after all and to him so what Mom is always doing laundry and is washing the floor more than usual. He doesn't care. He is not trying to be ugly or contrary. I am convinced he can do it and he knows what he is doing, but as with everything else, as he starts to get tired and hungry all of our training goes out the window. He does awesome in the morning, it is in the afternoon we have all our accidents. Of course as with everything with Nate it is a rather humorous prospect, I am sure lucky that Nate is the second child and Gwen broke me in to the whole epic nature of the "potty training experience". I am not as frustrated and take it all in stride. I think we are getting close, we only had the one accident and he apparently pooped in the potty today (unlike yesterday when he pooped on top of the potty). But we have all learned that when Nate poop on the potty come get Mommy because Mommy needs to help wipe. (she doesn't want to continue to wipe up poop from places that aren't your butt). I have also learned that boys need way more underpants for "practice" than girls. Nate is pretty good about sitting on the potty and pointing, but man the aiming thing doesn't always go as planned. I don't understand why and I am not sure I want to, but needless to say, we change underpants A LOT even though we don't have that many accidents. He only has that problem at home though. So this weekend we got another 7 pack, Nate is pretty excited.
He took them all out and put them on his head, and told us he was Mater! This weekend we helped with the Used book sale at school, this is Eric's type of activity. I signed him up to clean up and we went a little early and he bought a lot of books and talked about it all weekend. While we were there we looked at Gwen's classroom, I don't know if you can read her praying hands...
it says "I pray for Lana's dog Chewy and my family and my Uncle Eric". What is funny is we do special intentions everyday and we pray for our friends and their dog who has been deceased over a year, they've never met the dog, but we pray for him, everyday!
I think I have previously mentioned my free tulips and I think it is kind of funny that I planted all these tulips and I got all the pink on one side and all the yellow on the other. But these last to pop up are so pretty I made the kids pose in front of them. I think you can see we chopped off Gwen's hair! She wanted it to be short like her friend's I am pretty excited about it, she looks cute and so much easier to maintain!

Big Day

We aren't that far from Raleigh, so one Sunday after Church I suggested we drive there and take the kids to the museums and the Capital. The kids have been begging to go the museum, so we went. A couple weekends ago. We brought the carrier with us, the kids enjoyed it, here are some pictures from the Natural History Museum. Here they are listening to facts about great NC sports figures.
Here is Nate riding in the canoe, who knew he was allowed to climb in there! Gwen was too chicken to do it, but a museum employee said you want to get in, Nate said sure!
We went to a guided tour of the State Capital. Eric didn't think it was that impressive. But we did get to sit in the seats.
Apparently the Capital building burned down, but one of the things they managed to save was this picture of George Washington, I think it is one of 3 paintings of him. She said it was very heavy!
This was a the other side, I don't remember which side was which! We got to go upstairs and see from top...we thought it was interesting because 2 newspaper reporters sat right up front.
I took a picture of where people could come and sit and watch. It looks fairly uncomfortable.

We also thought this was interesting, apparently they wanted a sculpture of George Washington, they asked Thomas Jefferson who he suggested. He suggested a guy from France who had never met George Washington, and the portrait that was sent never made it, he found a bust of George Washington and was inspired to make him look like Mars, the god of war.
Apparently the men tried to get this out, but it was too large to fit through the door. Fortunately, they were able to re-create this gem for our Capital!

Update

We have been very busy around here the last couple of weeks. Nate showed an interest in potty training and like Gwen I think like Gwen he would do much better if I just let him go with it. It seems to me if I ask him to go and he goes then he forgets to tell me. But then I have issues now like today when he pooped in his underpants (again) and he tried to clean it up. He pooped in his pants yesterday and fortunately I noticed almost immediately. But, sadly today he pooped during quiet time. I made him go potty before we went for a walk this afternoon and today he peed on himself during dinner. So I put him in a diaper! I know that is the wrong thing to do, but I can't handle any more laundry. He is totally able to be potty trained and he has the desire and most of the signs and I want to get it done, but I am tired of the laundry. I don't have any patience for this part of the process especially since he has days when he has no accidents. I just don't know what to do. We will be gone most of the morning again tomorrow so I haven't decided if I want to just let it go with underpants or if I am going put him in diapers and wait until later. This is the part of parenting I am not fond of, maybe I should have read up on a parenting book or something on potty training, because I am obviously no expert.
I seem to be having a random bad week where I break dishes and I get peed on and it generally makes the week frustrating. Sure they have been great moments but generally things just aren't going my way this week. Which happens to everyone on occasion. So, we will see what next week brings, it is going to be a quieter week, I think.