Easter 2011 (short post)

I have tons of pictures to post about what a great Easter weekend we had. But here are my 2 favorite pictures.

Easter morning with her Easter basket.

In the afternoon at our egg hunt.

Any Given Sunday

On any given Sunday this is the kind of activities you'll find us doing.

We went for a walk in the neighborhood and then out for breakfast.

Walking to get a donut for Ally after she ate all her eggs at the restaurant.

Ally and her donut. Then Ally and I went to swimming lessons but I was so busy talking to another parent I did not take a single picture. Then after swim lessons Ally and I did battle in the locker room. She really does not like to take showers, and taking on in the locker room is nightmare for her. She screamed and cried and refused to get in the water (it was almost worse than Flagstaff last year Aunt Suzie) finally I picked her up (while I was fully clothed) and held her under the shower to rinse off. It would not have been so bad or worth the battle, but we had a party to go to after swimming, and before we got there Ally agreed to take a shower, so I really felt like I could not give in to her crying, I felt I had to make sure she got wet and rinsed off the chlorine or it would send a message I don't want her to learn. It is sometimes so hard to be a parent.

As soon as the shower was over we went straight to the party. It was Ally's friend Stella's little sister Violet's 2nd birthday. Complicated I know. But Ally and Stella had lots of fun being together and being the older girls at the party. I just had to snap this picture of the two of them out on the porch together. They look all grown up eating alone and chatting.

Patiently waiting to the cake to be cut.

Ally took this picture of Kitty and taggie, Special Kitty is still one of Ally's favorite "special things".

After the party, and a nap at home Alice came over for a play date. I think I should mention now how lucky we feel we are that Ally does still take a nap, about 3 days a week at school and every day on the weekend she sleeps for at least an hour.

At the park.

Look at how high Ally threw the ball

Last Sunday was another great day for our family. We had time together, time with friends and some alone time for each of us. A really nice mix of activities.

Silly Saturday

Its taken me a week to post this but here is last Saturday's adventures. I worked hard to bring the camera with me everywhere we went all weekend and take pictures of the ordinary, silly fun stuff we do. Ally was a great sport and Becky only rolled her eyes at me a few times.

Breakfast at our favorite bagel place. Ally had her usual plain bagel with nothing on it or done to it, just a whole plain bagel. It took about an hour but she ate the whole thing!

After bagels and a quick stop at Target we went home to get ready for our monthly Guatemala Girls gathering. This time Gabi was missing, but here are Alice, Roxie, Rosa and Ally blowing bubbles on the front porch.

Ally had a nap after our play date and then we were off to the park.

Running and playing soccer with mama.

Ally is getting so big!

Gotta love the abs of steel!

Upside down Ally!

And now the silly Ally faces.

My dad used to tell me after a haircut that he liked how he could see my face. It always embarrassed me but now I get what he means. I think Ally's hair looks great almost all the time, but shorter like this and you can see more of her face.

It was a really fun day.

On a not so fun note, Ally is sick again. We are all not very happy about it. Becky was sick last week with a bad cold, and this week Becky and Ally are on Spring Break so no school for them and Sunday Ally started running a fever and by bedtime her nose was runny too and today, Monday as I write this she is just miserable. I so hope she feels better soon. She has been sick way too much this year.

Haircut

About every 6 weeks we get our haircut. Becky and I have been going to the same stylist for about 6 years now, Feri, and Feri has cut Ally's hair since Ally joined our family almost 4 years ago. I thought it was time to document the procedure again. The iphone has made haircuts a cinch for Ally. Ally has the iphone tuned in to Curious George, and Feri is ready to get started. After Ally is draped in a cape Feri gets started.

As Feri works around Ally's head we position the iphone so that Ally is looking whichever way Feri needs to get the angles. This time we had Ally's hair cut pretty short, and she loves it!

Saturday April 16

Yesterday was a big day for us. We took Ally to her first concert. We went to the Brattle Theater in Harvard Sq to see Elizabeth Mitchell, our favorite children's singer perform in person. It was AMAZING. I can't actually think of how it could have been better. The concert lasted about an hour - they had popcorn to buy, we also bought her newest cd and a concert T-shirt for Ally. It was a small theater so we were only about 15' from the stage and she sounded just like she does on the albums. Her 10 year old daughter, her husband and 2 other musicians performed with her. The best part was at the end when she asked for requests for 1 last song and I yelled out Pio - please sing Pio and got a lot of quizzical stares, until Becky finally yelled Los Pollitos, which is the real name of the song, we just call it Pio in our house. And they played it. It was simply magical to hear our favorite family song performed live.

Ally and mommy on the way to the concert. It was certainly a cold blustery day.

All of us in our seats waiting for the show to begin.

Doesn't get much better than good music, popcorn and the people you love most!

Later in the day we made a trip to the mall and just happened to run in to the Easter Bunny! Ally said she did want to get her picture taken with him.

She smiled big, but would not sit any closer than this!

All in all a pretty great day.

Too cute for words

Ally's babysitter Lauren texted me this picture of Ally from this morning. Ally has the day off of school for staff development, and so she is spending the day with her babysitters. They were on their way to get coffee for Lauren and a muffin for Ally. yes, that is her Manx cat stuffed animal she is holding. He is the lovey she keeps at school, but Ally did not want him getting lonely at school all by himself next week (its Spring Break) so she brought him home.

I have tons of stuff to blog, just been to busy and too tired. I'll try to get more up this weekend and be better next week.

Had to share

Every year we get our pictures taken by a professional photographer. We've found a really wonderful local photographer who is reasonably priced for prints and digital images (which is what we really want). Here are 2 of the images we selected. The pictures were taken in the fall but I finally got around to choosing our final 2 images so they are new to us.

Upgrade

Its safe to say that Ally was very excited to play our new Candy Land Game. The new version is World of Sweets Candy Land and the squares are bigger and it has different candy than the original and most importantly it has new cards. Our old cards had "conveniently" become bent in such a way that a certain 4 year old knew which cards were the candy cards! This meant she had a better than average chance of winning. We were quite impressed with the cunning and skill. Its taken us a few weeks to figure it out, and she is very good at it never giving it away. She did agree though that it was time for new cards and a new game. And now she is extremely careful with the new ones and has said how much she likes it better than the old one. Loves loves loves Candy Land. She was so happy to have a new game with new cards and most especially happy to see it still had a red figurine for her to be.

Typical Weekend

It was a pretty typical weekend for us filled with shopping, play dates, a birthday party and some work around the house. Other than being tired we are all healthy.

It snowed here on Friday, and is forecasted to again today, but on Saturday I bought pansies and Becky and Ally planted our window boxes!

I love the bright blue color and the happy and healthier girl!

Saturday night we hosted a dinner party with 3 other families from preschool. It was a lot of fun four 4 year olds and two 2 year olds and 7 adults. Ally and her classmates, Stella, Erik & Andy giggled and laughed all thru dinner. They played so well together, no tears or grumpiness the whole time. It was fabulous!

On Sunday, after swim lessons Ally and I went to River's 4th birthday party. Here Ally is eating her cupcake.

A weekend is not complete without a trip to Target. We met Alice and her parents for dinner on Sunday night and then we all went to Target. Here is the gang in the hula hoop aisle. You can see Tom trying to get away from the commotion, or he'd be drafted to hula hoop. Cheryl is demonstrating how its done, and Becky is handing out the hoops. I was just photographing the hilarious scene.

After the hooping it was time to read books.

Alice and Ally are both reading the same Disney Storybook.

A good weekend.