Easter 2014 Celebrations

We had lots of fun this Easter week/weekend! It started on Thursday afternoon with Carter's class Easter egg hunt and party. Ella and I joined them for the fun!

Handsome boy getting ready to hunt!

 Counting eggs with his buddy Dylan

Ella always makes new friends at Carter's class parties. She definitely thinks she belongs in his class, too!

 Carter's whole class!

Back inside, the kids enjoyed a game of jellybean bingo, made a cute little Easter craft, and decorated an Easter cookie for snack.

He's always so sweet to include his little sis.

 snack time!

Later that evening, we went over to my parents' house for our extended family gathering - an easter egg hunt for the kids and a delicious Easter dinner! My cousin and his family were in town all the way from California, so we had a big group, and a great time!! 

Carter and Ella getting ready to hunt eggs again!

 Ella, Carter, Hayden and Zoe (and her little brother Nathan is missing from the picture)

 Zoe, Carter and Hayden off hunting!

 Ella got the hang of it right away!

Love my pretty girl to pieces! 

(She is cooperating more lately with smiling for pictures... yay!!)

 Grandad took all the kids for a ride after the egg hunt!

On Easter morning, we had a wonderful, delicious brunch at Bonnie Ruth's in Frisco with my parents, Andrew and Eric's parents. No pictures from that, but it was so, so good!! Then we headed to our church for a great (but SO packed!) Easter service. When we came home, the Easter bunny had paid the kids a visit with Easter baskets and even left some more eggs to hunt in the backyard!!

Getting into their Easter baskets

I took some pictures with my "real" camera before heading out for the morning, and just look how many smiles I got!! It was so hard to choose a favorite of these two! 

 

 If I HAD to pick a favorite, it might be this one :)

 

.......Or maybe this one :)

 Love this family shot, too! Baby #3 making an appearance, too!

And a few pictures from our egg hunt at home. Ella got so into it!

 So handsome!

 

 So serious.

 All finished up! :)

 Ella said, "Can we go in now?!" She was eager to get inside and get into all those eggs! She knows how this works by now!!

And the rest of our Sunday was spent eating too much candy, relaxing, and watching a movie the Easter bunny brought. Our Easter weekend did also include a lot of baseball, but that'll be in my next post! Wonderful weekend with family celebrating, as always!

2nd Trimester Bump-date

Since I'm almost halfway through my pregnancy, I figured it was time for my first pregnancy update, or "Bump-date", as a friend of mine calls it. :)

Overall, I've been feeling much better in the second trimester than the first. Although I do still have moments here and there, the nausea and some of those yucky symptoms has majorly subsided, thankfully. I did start getting some headaches a few weeks ago, and the fatigue that I was lucky enough to miss out on the first few months has caught up to me. I'm SO tired.... all the time!! I have to take a short snooze each afternoon just to make it to 9pm. So that's new stuff, but I'll take that over being sick all the time any day! 

I have been feeling a lot of little baby movements since about 15 weeks. I love it! I can't wait until it's strong enough for Eric and the kids to feel it. I know Carter especially will enjoy that! 

Speaking of Carter, he has really gotten into this pregnancy with me. I wanted to write down some of the sweet things he has done and said lately, so I'll always remember. 

At school, his class started doing Joys & Concerns recently. His teacher tells me that each day he has something to say about the new baby. Usually it's a Joy that Mommy was feeling good today or was able to eat her dinner. HAHA!! Sometimes it's a concern that Mommy had a headache or didn't want to eat. What a sweet boy, always thinking about me. He also always prays for the baby in Mommy's tummy each night before bed.

We've been talking a lot about the baby in there, what it's doing and how it grows. He knows about the umbilical chord, how it sleeps most of the time, and about what size it is. We even look at pictures each week on Baby Center of what the baby looks like inside of me. He's very interested and intrigued by it all, that is why I can't wait until he can feel it and see it move in my belly. 

The other day, Carter innocently asked me, "Mom, does the baby have clothes?" I said, "Oh yeah, we have a lot of baby clothes in boxes up in the attic, and we'll bring them down soon and get them ready for the baby to wear." He said, "No, I mean, does the baby have clothes on INSIDE of you. Will it be wearing clothes when it's born?" How cute is that. I explained that the baby would be naked and he was concerned about it being cold. I told him we would put a diaper and clothes on just after s/he is born, he giggled a little and felt better knowing that. :)

At bedtime the night of Carter's birthday, I told him the story of the day he was born. I told him that we were so happy when we saw him for the first time that we cried happy tears. He smiled a sweet smile and said to me, "I bet you will cry again when this baby is born! ......I bet I might cry too!" He gave me a huge hug and buried his head in my stomach. "I love that baby so much...... I have tears right now!" He raised his head up and looked at me with his gorgeous blue eyes, and they were filled with tears. And of course, then mine did too. We laughed at ourselves and it was just a really sweet and special moment that I'll never forget. The love he has in his little heart already for this baby is just amazing, and I'm so proud of his tender and sensitive little spirit.

Ella is funny when it comes to this baby too.  She loves to talk to the baby through my stomach and always prays for the baby at night. She currently thinks she has a baby inside her tummy, and she talks about feeding that baby. Her understanding and interest in it at this point is obviously much more casual and less involved than Carter's is, but still sweet nonetheless.

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks. I have a sonogram scheduled in May, and this is when we could find out the gender.... if we want to. It's still up for debate, but we may skip out on that this time around. We'll see how tempted (or how strong-willed) I am in that dark sonogram room the day of!! 

15 weeks

 17 weeks

Celebrating Carter's 5th Birthday

Carter's birthday was Sunday, and with bad weather in the forecast, we decided to take the kids to the Dallas World Aquarium and to eat lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse. We headed down there first thing in the morning and beat the crowd! A pretty big storm came though as we were inside, and it felt very authentic, like we actually were in the rain forest with all the loud thunder and rain slowly seeping in! Kinda cool. Of course, the kids enjoyed all the exhibits, and we loved watching their excitement over all of it! 

This is what I get from Ella now when I ask her to smile for a picture. :/

 There's a smile.

 Love my babies.

 Baby penguin. Ella loved all the babies. Pretty sure she is saying "awwwwww!"

 Checking out the giant otter. He was very active and entertaining!

 

LOVE!

 Oh, these two..... :)

 Handsome boy on his 5th birthday! Hard to believe that's even possible.

 Oh Ella

 "Cheese!"

 Sting rays "COOL!"

 :)

 That is one big crab!!

The octopus was moving all over the glass. The kids loved watching it's little suction cups move and stick.

 Sharks!!

 Ella looks a little unsure, ha!

A few pictures from Eric's cell phone..... again, Ella refuses to look at the camera! Little toot! 

 With the beluga whale

 Watching the octopus

 This shark just parked it on top of the tunnel and took a nap, HA!

 Lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse in the trolley!

 Mmmmmm.... spaghetti! (One of my cravings lately.... so, so good!!)

 And a birthday canoli for the birthday boy!

Caught this silly girl dancing at lunch, made me smile!

 When we got home, Carter opened some gifts from us, we had left over spaghetti for dinner, and birthday cake!!

Carter was not all that excited about his very practical gift from me..... cool/dry athletic clothes for t-ball practice.

 Games!

 And LEGOS!

 Pretty girl playing with his new umbrella

 

Carter has spent the better part of the last 5 days enjoying all his new lego sets that he got from his friends at his party and us! We got him a little lego desk to help keep the pieces off the floor.... we'll see how that works!

Happy 5th birthday, sweet boy!! We love you!!