Fishies

Emily is obsessed with fishies. She had a teeny goldfish in a bowl ever since October. She loved her fish. Its name was fishy(yea we were really original but we didn't want to confuse her). So after awhile, and after Emily got way more powerful she felt the need to look at her fish ALL DAY LONG and then eventually wanted to pet the fish as well. After a few days of constantly helping her look at her fish and making sure it didn't end up on the floor we went and got a real fish tank. Most children would get a nice 1 gallon tank, not the children of Ed. He got her a 10 gallon tank(although the price was awesome so I can't complain). We moved over her teeny goldfish that has been hanging on all of these months and 2 other HUGE fat goldfish. We tried to give them names but I don't remember which is which and I'm guessing Emily doesn't either. She still tries to touch them but now its a lot harder for her to cause damage.

Easter Marathon

After the Easter egg hunt the day before I knew that Emily would be tons more excited about Easter day and her multiple baskets and egg hunts she would have today. At Christmas she still wasn't into opening presents but she is definitely getting the hang of it. We were going to head up to the Rog's for Easter soup so we only had a few minutes to give Emily her Easter basket. Thankfully, that's all she needed. I put it out on the couch for her when she was around the corner and when she saw it her eyes lit up.

Don't worry there are plenty more eggs full of candy underneath the huge pink ball!

She immediately went for the pink recorder. She was actually the one who picked it out for herself at the store but I managed to hide it from her for 2 weeks. She started tooting away.

She checked out "a book" (scratch & sniff!) and her new pink ball to replace her smaller one that had broken. Then she saw some eggs in her basket. Being such a smart girl that she is she assumed there was something in them so she opened one and candy came out! So she of course had to have a sample of some chocolate at 7am. Oh well, its Easter!

Then it was off to the Rog's for breakfast. Emily didn't quite understand that a hard boiled egg was still an "egg" because according to her only scrambled eggs are eggs but she eventually ate a little bit along with some sausage. She opened her Easter basket and again started tearing through it. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures because for some reason I always forget to bring out my camera when we are at other people's houses. Emily then started her Easter egg hunt. She was becoming a pro at it. These eggs had money in them so she got a kick out of shaking them up. Also by this time candy count is still at 3 little tiny chocolate eggs!!!

After the Rog's we headed down to Great Grandma Gato's for some ravioli. As I hoped Emily did take a quick snooze in the car so she wouldn't be a total crab. We got there and immediately started her egg hunt. It was probably a good thing that Cousin Sean had his egg hunt in another room already because I could see them drawing blood over a plastic egg. Then we had our ravioli. And then the Easter baskets came out. It is a good thing we waited until after we ate because otherwise the 2 of them would have been on candy overload. Sean had to sample pretty much everything in his basket but Emily was more interested in the fruit snacks. All in all, Emily was a pretty darn good girl all day on Easter and is eating her candy a little bit everyday. What more could a Mom ask for!

Easter Egg Hunt

The Rog family was all set to ride down the road about a mile to go to the neighborhood Egg Hunt. As I started checking out the weather report throughout the week I knew things didn't look good. When you are 8 years old looking for eggs in the rain probably is tons of fun....not for a toddler(or her parents). So I needed a backup plan of course.Luckily, while we were at library storytime on Friday they had put out the new "Free" kids magazines with all the fun activities and events going on around Chicagoland.

And there it was....The Hippity-Hop Egg Hunt! It sounded awesome, egg hunt(indoors) &(by age group!), prizes, refreshments, the Easter bunny for free pics, face painting, magician, juggler, games, petting zoo, moon bounce, etc....It definitely caught my attention. Then I figured out where it was at, a retirement community. It definitely burst my bubble for a minute but I thought, hmm, maybe this could still be awesome.

I somehow got Ed on board(I think the whole indoors thing sealed the deal) and of course we had to invite Sean along. So per the weather report we woke up to pouring rain, retirement community here we come!!!
We got there and the place was already packed!!! It was crazy! However, I was feeling much better since there were people here :)

The set up for the younger kids was actually really cool and very kid friendly. They made an encased balloon pit:

And then they would let 10 or so kids in at a time. Here is Emily checking out the pit:

At her first try in the pit she kind of just wanted to play with the balloons. But can you blame the kid? How fun is a pit of balloons?

Then on her second try(she only got 1 egg the first time because she had some ruthless kids in there with her) she started to get the hang of it and pushed those balloons around like crazy!!

(You can kind of see her hand, she went completely under all the balloons)

And afterwards she was rewarded with a cupcake and cookie. I assure you she at one point was licking the frosting off the top but I apparently missed that picture!

All in all, a fun DRY Easter Egg Hunt!!!

Random Playtime Pics

I had some random pics on my camera of Emily that have absolutely nothing to do with anything but I think are pretty cute. For your viewing pleasure:

Put me in the Zoo

Apparently everyone in the world went to the Zoo on Thursday, so we did too. Emily was much more into the animals this time and was super excited to see the cow. I think once the new bear exhibit opens up she'll really enjoy that one too. Generally we only take one wagon for the 2 kids but figured we'd bring both and drag the coolers along with us to save Kevin a jog back to the cars. I think the picture speaks for itself:

The kids were not in a smiling mood so I didn't end up getting too many pictures. They were too busy, too hot, and getting too tired. So this is the cutest one of Emily petting the goat. I was so proud of her that she did it!