dinner time by hazel

hunter-gatherer

between lucy's pink eye and my 2 week cold, we haven't been to playgroup in over a month. happily we made it today. especially since it was the easter egg hunt. hazel has really been looking forward to easter and the sugar it provides. we've worked a bit on the real meaning but not enough. i made these resurrection eggs for my primary class and meant to share them for family home evening, but it didn't work out. perhaps tonight......anyway, hazel was super excited to go find the eggs but first she and lucy played on the huge playground:

 lucy tormented me with her fearless ways, climbing up anything and everything:

hazel did some of her own climbing:

and posed prettily for pictures:

finally it was time for the main event. lucy threw a lovely tantrum as we left the playground and crossed a street to another small park where the eggs were hidden. she was fine once she saw that it was another place to play. we let the smaller kids go in before the 3 and 4 year olds. lucy found an egg...:

handed me her bucket and ran off to play:

hazel on the other hand, focused on finding as many eggs as she could:

it was a good thing lucy wasn't interested, hazel found enough for both of them:

i transferred a few into lucy's bucket and let her enjoy her spoils:

and by 'enjoy', i mean consistantly drop and pick them up. then it was back to the bigger park, where lucy continued to shorten my life span:

at this point hazel made an exciting discovery. she ran over to me and said, "mommy! i found somefing for you! come and see! it's a dinosaur bones!" since she had watched her favorite show, dinosaur train, and since elmo's world was also about dinosaurs today, i figured she was playing pretend with some sticks. she wasn't:

how cool is that? she was so excited. she decided it was a t-rex because of it's "weawy sharp teef":

maybe she should be a paleontologist:

with all this talk of dinosuars, of course lucy had to become one:

"roarrrrrrrr!"

the lappy by hazel

self-portrait by hazel

of plains & planes

i recently saw some easter ideas on the blog make and takes that seemed easy and super fun for the kids. one of them was growing grass for the easter bunny to leave a treat. so saturday, we sowed our seeds:

hazel was messy but very meticulous:

lucy was.......well......she was just messy:

after we all filled our jars [and covered the table] with soil, we sprinkled on some grass seeds:

and watered:

the girls had fun and it wasn't too horribly dirty afterwards.

i was remembering the early demise of my "garden" from last year which made me begin to worry that i had already killed the grass and even said so to grant last night. he yawned, said to look at them in the morning and started snoring. this is what i found in the morning:

can you see it?? it is growing! here's a better picture:

each jar has several wee little sprouts. i'm so proud.

since i was oozing craftiness, i decided to put this picture together for hazel:

(yes those are some pretty realistic clouds.) why? because the girls and i are "leavin' on a jet plane". we're heading to utah in april! the only downside is grant not coming with us. he'll still be finishing up this semester. anyway, i've been dying to tell hazel since i knew she would be so excited, not only to see her grandparents, great-grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins but also to fly up in the sky. she came up to me a few months ago, looking kind of dejected, and said, "but mommy, i just don't have wings wike a bird. so i can never fwy up in the sky." apparently i was in a somewhat prophetic mood because i said, "well, maybe one day daddy and i will take you to fly in an airplane." she liked that answer a lot. i wanted to tell her soon but didn't relish the thought of the constant "are we weaving on a pwane today?" so i made her a countdown chain:

and we told her monday night during "family homies". she was happy:

it's playtime

lucy enjoys being the baby:

"i did it!"

what happens when you do a summersault too close to the couch?

this:

dress up time:

my, how she has grown. one of our first blog posts was of hazel in this costume.

who is that lurking in the shadows?

it's suuuuuuuuuuuuu-per woocy! and her sidekick superhero hazel: 

no super hero is too good to play with playdough:

 

here's another example of why i can't leave the girls unattended for a second:

what is that redness around her mouth?  at first i thought it might be a reaction to the amoxicillin but then i saw this:

and nine of these:

hazel then said that she and 'woocy' ate all of the gum. good thing that "7 years to digest"-thing is a myth. stinkers.

aren't her eyes looking so much better? still a little swollen but no more goop! we still have 3 more days of eye drops to go.

one final picture:

she's so vain.