Hippity Hoppity (Part I, Easter on the way...)

Happy Easter, everyone! 

The blink of an eye and here we are, the last week of March and Easter come and gone already.  

And here I am, the last evening of my spring break, and only now getting around to writing a blog post about any of it.  Time, and the flying! I can't handle it.

But-- no time like the present to get you up to speed.  Not counting the hole in our bathroom ceiling (current plumbing issue: a blocked drain in the upstairs bath), and your usual run-of-the mill sibling squabbling and holiday stress, we've had a pretty stellar week.  Nice weather, time off, lunch out with my honey (two days in a row!).  I could really handle a lot more of this spring break.

Focusing on the great memories of spring break instead of the reality of a fast-approaching 5am wake-up as I head back to the real world tomorrow....

Recap of the festivities:

Thursday's trip to Berlin (driving tour of the heart of Amish Country, in which I turned into my mother and pointed out all the things, then an exceedingly long stay at Kaufman's Lawn Furniture, which was surprisingly awesome) and Strasburg (lovely relaxing dinner with my lovely, relaxing family).... 

Boys are never too big for diggers...

Look!  Sometimes my children play together, without screens!!

Jack and Ivy are playing checkers in a log cabin.  We are in love with these tiny log cabins and really want to set up a whole compound of them somewhere by a lake...

 Egg hunting at Aunt Pat's house.  The breezeway is MADE for egg hunts...

Baby Alex-- not such a baby any more!

Those fisher pice toys.... magic.

 Friday-- we were so stinking wholesome all day!  We made cookies, times 2.

 (I love this picture.  The kids chopping nuts with the antique chopper that I used as a kid to help my mom...)

 Then our friends came over for our annual egg dyeing  tradition...

These three bunnies!

You'd be amazed at how little egg dye we spilled. We rock at this! 

 Finished product!  Not pictured: eggs.  Not sure why we didn't get finished egg pictures.  oh well.

Saturday:  Time to get dressed up and visit the Gardens!

My beautiful babies, all ready to head out into the beautiful day...

We tried valiantly to get a photo of the kiddos with our resident Easter Bunny (first Easter with the bunny and the chickens, after all!) but it turns out that while Toasted Marshmallow is the cutest bunny on earth, he is perhaps the least cooperative.  Here's the best of the lot of bunny pictures....

Off we go!

 The Gardens were splendid as always.  Smelled like heaven in there.

 An early Easter meant no outdoor flowers yet.  But they made up for it with ribbon streamers.

 Annual picture in the seed sculpture!  I can't believe they fit!  We kind of wedged them in there...

Bedtime calls. Part II (Easter day and water park!) will have to have it's own post, shortly...

Ups and downs...

So, it's been a roller coaster of a week around our house.  After the most sublime start to our weekend last Saturday (see below), our house was beset by Plague on Sunday (not pictured).  Suffice it to say that our house was NOT a place you wanted to spend time that day.  We had to cancel the last Soup of the season and it wasn't til the end of this past week that everyone felt back to normal.  Put a bit of a damper on the week.  But we've made it through!  And we were back to our weekend-lovin' selves just in time...

In other news, I am on Spring break!  Not a moment too soon, after the intense busy-ness of this last week.  I spent the day today by myself in the house, deep cleaning everything I could get my hands on.  It was awesome.  Tomorrow, I am getting my hair cut.  Drastically. Stay tuned.

Here are some glimpses of the good parts of the last week.  You don't need to see pictures from Sunday.  Really.

Last Saturday:  60 degree sunshine, and a day with no plans.  We went to all the parks.

Morning at Forest Hills.

We fed bread to a swan!

 Found another waterfall, too.

Also found this cool climbing structure.

Then, our lake!  No more snowdrifts at Rocky River beach...

We found this partially built driftwood structure which the kids spent the better part of 2 hours customizing into a house boat, complete with door, roof, beds, and a fridge.

We were the picture of lounging happiness.

It was a beautiful memory to hold us through the next day, when life no longer seemed worth living..  Sigh.

Anyways.


Later in the week:

A girl has been motivated to ride her bike!  We tried riding without training wheels, with glimmers of success, but not there quite yet.

A Friday afternoon campfire.

Chickens!  The ladies are pretty funny these days.  They now come when called, especially if you offer some scratch grains.  They are hilarious when they are running towards you from across the yard...

Maren, on Jack.

Polish, our little snuggler.

Maren and Lyonaise.  Noble, aren't they?

Fun at the music store.  Jack needed ANOTHER new book for piano.  He's coming along well. Spent a lot of time this week figuring out how to play a song by ear.  I think, though he won't admit it, that he is really enjoying his progress...

 For your viewing enjoyment:  Dog and Rabbit.  They are getting along a bit better these days...

Me and my school group, hitting the mall on Friday. Seriously, these are the sweetest kids, and they make for easy field trips.  We had a great day.

Saturday:  A fun birthday party at Mitchell's, followed by a playdate with the birthday girl and her brother, because we'd forgotten just how much we all get along...

 Yesterday:  A spontaneous trip to the Home Expo because Melinda and Will had free tickets.  Mostly the kids played on the sample playgrounds,  And played tag in the Convention Center hallway.  GREAT spot for tag, actually.

Later this week we are planning a trip to Amish country (to pick up the Adirondack chairs we bought for Farley's, and see family too!) and an overnight trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  Oh yeah, and Easter.  There's this little egg hunt thing at the Botanical Gardens on Saturday... :)

Roller coaster is headed up again, and we are grateful.

Back to the spring cleaning now....

Lions, lambs and flying time...

March!  So soon!

We can't decide if the month has come in like a lion or a lamb.  So far in these 11 days we've seen snow and seventy degrees, gone skiing and played outside in sundresses.  Life is rich and full and racing past... So many delicious days to remember, punctuated by long hours and so many meetings at work.  I'm rather tired all the time in March, I've found.  Even a mild winter wears one down.  Yet!  Spring is coming! The ides of March are almost upon us, the light is longer every day-- and spring break is one week away.

We've got this.

Last weekend, starting with Saturday of All The Things.

I got up early to hit the first of the spring resale events (success!  Two huge bags of new spring wardrobes for the every-growing little ones!) then my mom and I went to Crocker Park for lunch and some more shopping, in honor of her birthday.  Pretty amazing day already, right?

Nat and the kids went to Free Day at MOCA.  Self- portraits and emotive polaroids and all the delightful weirdness that comes with a visit to a contemporary art museum...

Oh, the concentration!

 We all met up at gram's house for a surprise cake-and-coffee party, and then topped the day by running off to ski with my sister.

We had a blast.

 I love to ski!  Why do I always forget that??  And even more so when the winter air is warm and soft, the ski area is bustling with happy, slightly drunk people, crazy youth are hurtling themselves down Tiger into a pool of water, and we get to drink hard cider and listen to live music between sets of fast, fast runs.

The snow was pretty amazing for March, and the company-- even better. We closed the ski area and exhausted ourselves and had the best time...

Sunday.

I slept in!

Then, we went to see baby animals, because it is March.

We wandered in springy sunshine...

...sampled maple syrup, and shared a Maple Stir, of course...

...rode on ponies.... (well, Ivy anyways....)

 ... and generally enjoyed ourselves.  The FarmPark is invariably a great time...

This week has been your classic "March showers bring April flowers" sort of week
(wait, that isn't how the rhyme goes? hmmm.)

Rain and grey and drear.

Except for Tuesday, when it was like this.

Spring is intoxicating.  I can't even describe how crowded Lakewood Park was.  We could hardly walk down the paths for all the dogs and bikes and other spring-drunk people wandering, blinking, in the light...

The sun glowed on the lake (Ivy said, Look mom!  It's like Farley's at sunset!) and we shook off long days and traffic grumpiness for a few moment in the sunshine..

In other, non-weather-related new this week:

Ivy lost a second tooth!  Here is Jack investigating her mouth.

Also, she got her ears pierced.

Before...

 And after!

Ivy would like you to know that it "really really stings" to get your ears peirced, but she didn't cry.  She's a tough cookie, my girl.  And so, so happy to have her pretty ears.

Me?  I'm ok with it... I think the earrings look great, like she's had them forever.  But I don't know how it happened so fast, how we are here so soon.  This sweet girl, so grown up, so amazing.

As I snuggle in on my couch with my dog and my computer and my husband, a movie on TV and piles of laundry on the floor, tired but content-- I am struck once again by the goodness of life, and how much I just want to slow it all down....