Skyla's First Easter!

We did lots of fun stuff together for Skyla's first Easter.  First, we brought back an old family tradition and made Easter eggs, but with our own twist: we made holes in the eggs and blew them out into bowls, so we were left with perfect hollow eggs.  Kaylee and Charlie also made special Easter bread with Grandma, then Grandpa helped us decorate the eggs.

Easter morning came and we helped Skyla discover the most exciting part of the holiday: getting an Easter basket!  It was a little hard for me to put together something she would like (and hard to resist all the stuff in the stores that she's way too young for!) but she seemed pretty happy with it.

After our exciting morning we got all dressed up and went to church.  We took my grandma and she was very excited (she said she hasn't missed an Easter service in over 40 years!)  We had a wonderful time.  The pastor did a nice service and she is just so full of joy you feel happy just by being in the same room as her. All the children of the congregation did a beautiful ceremony called a flower communion, and they gave everyone in the church a flower -- it was amazing!  Afterwards we went to the park across the street for a huge Easter egg hunt, with the Easter bunny himself leading the way!

Right after that we went home for a family brunch, with the quiche from the Easter eggs we made, Caesar salad, my mom's yummy bread, and (FINALLY!) cheese (for those of you who don't know, Tory gave up cheese for Lent, so we had lots of fun indulging).  One final Easter egg hunt in the backyard and then we took a much deserved nap as a family :)

What an absolutely perfect day.  Skyla, I hope your first Easter was as perfect as you!

Family Fun Time: Cirque du Soleil and Roma's 5th Bday Party

We had a wonderful weekend with the fam down in San Jose.  Kyle came up with Kaylee and Charlie and we started the weekend off with a bang by going to see Cirque du Soleil!  We parked at my Dad's office and walked right over.  The kids were so excited!  We were excited that we got to break in our brand-new Ergo so that we didn't have to struggle with the stroller!

 I got to snap a few pics before an usher told me to put away the camera.  Skyla was stoked to be there, as you can clearly see.

A few cool shots of the whole scene outside, and some cute men with some cute kids!  The last one is a keeper of the girl cousins at dinner.

The fun didn't end there!  The next day we all went up to Grant Ranch in the San Jose hills for Roma's camping birthday party.  It was totally fun and we were very lucky to have perfect weather.  Here are some shots of eating the yummy cake, Roma opening her presents, and Kaylee and Roma boogey-ing down with Roma's new ukelele :)



The party planners had a great idea to work off all that sugar with a nice nature hike.  We were pleasantly surprised by how short and easy the hike was.  We got a few great pics along the way of course!

After the hike we opened up the gift we gave Roma: a kid's version of ladder ball with a Sponge Bob theme.  It was a big hit and Charlie was a natural!  Kaylee did the hula while they played.  Later on Tory and Geordie tried it out and had a great time (I think Tory should have scored extra points because he played while wearing Skyla!)

The last few cute pics of a great day!