Easter fun at daycare...

This morning, Fender's daycare had their Easter Egg hunt with the Easter Bunny. I have to say it was pretty funny (and yes, Fender had a good time, but you wouldn't know it from any of his pictures of course.) First of all, being Spring Break, two of the kids are out for the week and of the four who remain, Fender was the only one who brought any colored hard boiled eggs. I kid you not they were running around picking up plain white hard boiled eggs. It was sad and funny all at the same time. We were each to bring 3 plastic eggs and 3 hard boiled eggs, so thankfully the plastic ones added some color. :) You'll note his class is still ALL BOYS...and one of the boys cracked us up because he seemed to be scared of any eggs that were colored...he would run around looking for plain white hard boiled eggs on the ground. But the funniest part was near the end when Fender realized it was fun to throw the hardboiled eggs around...so one by one, he cracked all but one, which he gently rolled across the ground instead. Wish I had a video of that! Oh well...here are some pictures from this morning's festivities followed by a very short video near the beginning of the Easter Egg Hunt (before we found how fun it was to throw the heavy hard boiled eggs around).

 
 
 
 

Egg coloring...

The family colored Easter Eggs last night with Auntie L. I have been really looking forward to this Easter. At 17 months old, Fender can really interact and enjoy it all!

 
 

Video part 1: Daddy teaches Fender to use the egg holder so our hands stay clean. :)


Video part 2: Dad had to concede that sometimes fun has to be a little messy. :)


When we wrapped up the eggs for the night, Fender had a red right hand and a blue left hand. They may be stained that way through Easter. Oops. Live, laugh, and learn. :)

Crazy for Olives...

Normal? The boy LOVES olives!!!!!!!!!! First thing every morning he goes to the fridge and asks for olives (pimento and all) and again every night before dinner. He is usually more calm than he appears in the video...I guess waiting the extra second for me to get the camera was enough time to put him into olive withdrawal. Enjoy the laugh.

First Snow...

Woke up to a winter wonderland. Here are pictures from Fender's first snow play. The last picture is my attempt at getting Fender to make me a snow angel. Ha...as if.
 
 
 
 

Easter photo shoot...

Here are some pics from our first family photo shoot. Only one picture of the family survived the cut, but we thought nearly all the pictures of Fender turned out great, of course. He still barely ever smiles for the camera. I am definitely jealous of all our friends out there with super smile happy camera babies...you know who you are. But I guess it just makes it that much more special when you see Fender laugh and smile in person. :)

 
 
 
 



By the way...for those of you who were concerned about my being denied the right to vote yesterday... You might be interested to know that my voter registration was quickly reinstated this morning with a profuse appology from a woman at the county clerk's office who said my registration was revoked by the Secreatary of State because of a "strong possible match" of me with someone else in some other part of the country or state...they never said where.

It sure didn't take any effort to get it cleared up and she said they were supposed to have notified me to sort it out prior to the election, but it was never sent. All I know is, IF and I'm not saying there is any sort of political debauchery going on in attempts to sabatage an election...because that would be completely unheard of...but IF it were, then I would have to say mission accomplished, because it certainly kept my vote from counting when it mattered most.

VOTE...

Seriously fellow Texans...go Vote.

You have until 7:00PM tonight.

Hopefully you won't get to the polls and find you've erroneously been black-listed like me.

Am I alone here, or doesn't the constitution give all tax paying (non-felon) citizen's a right to vote? Ugh...feathers will be ruffled until we get this straightened out folks!!!!!!! The Secretary of State picked the wrong conscientious citizen to mess with.

Saturday play cont...

Fender's buddy needs a drink of some water after all those tasty milk bones earlier...
 

Okay, should I tell you that Fender learned this from watching Sebastain do it first? The boys were thirsty, what can I say?
 

Fender says...okay, all done now, momma. So I proceeded to get him out of the wet clothes as the sun moved behind a cloud and we headed inside...
 

But not before he had a chance to crawl under the deck to play while I was putting the other toys away. Boys...can't take your eyes off them.
 

A beautiful saturday in february...

Fender will be 17 months old tomorrow. Yikes. Sign language doesn't seem to be slowing down his attemps at speech, in fact, I think wanting to talk may be slowing down his attempts at signs. :) He does have a new sign for ball, though. I thought ball would be an easy word, but the L at the end of things is more difficult than it seems. Attempts at ball and bowl, for example, sound the exact same. Frustration with me not knowing exactly what he is "saying" is likely the reason he came up with a sign for ball at all. ;) In on-going speech development, it seems everyone has been trying to teach our little man about the G on the end of Dog. So much so, that dog is now a two syllable word (dah-guh) with emphasis on the guh.

That's all I'll go on about for now. Here are some pictures from our 80 degree (F) Saturday this weekend.
We start, with an "uh-oh" as Fender wanted to make sure Sebastian had access to ALL his milk bones at once. Notice the excellent milk bone toss as we (apparently throw) the biscuits back in the box. And have some fun doing so.
 
 

Too tired at nap time to lay down I guess...:)
 

Outside play: first we need a little water...
 

Hats...

For my Valentine's gift, Drewry set up a photo shoot for the family last Saturday. To my disbelief, it was a huge success. We had lots of fun, despite the fact that it took a couple of hours. And we came away with a COPYRIGHT RELEASE of all our pictures. Yea! And as a bit of a teaser...I will say that there may or may not have been a bunny involved.
For now, here we were playing around with a couple of hats. His favorite is his Daddy's beat up old straw cowboy hat.

 
 
 
 

...and a couple of misc pictures from the weekend.

Growth chart...

By request...here's a copy of Fender's growth chart since birth. Hee hee...probably not going to be the tallest in the class. An interesting observation, however, is how he stayed in the upper range on the height chart the whole time I was breatfeeding (first 6 1/2 months) but rate of growth seemingly declined almost immediately when we switched. Was it the milk switch or a normal decline in growth after 6 months that I'm not aware of. I'm sure I could debate this one for years. :)

 
 

Pa Pa gets a tiller...

 
 
 

Fat tuesday...

Fender prepares for Mardi Gras...
 

Today is Shrove Tuesday (a.k.a Fat Tuesday, a.k.a. Mardi Gras as most of you may know it better). It is the Feast before the Fast. Today is "Pancake Supper Day" and some choose to binge on anything and everything before settling into a period of fasting, prayer, and spiritual reflection for the next 40 days and 40 nights (not counting Sundays...which are considered Feast days and apparently nearly anything is allowed on Feast days...weird, huh...so say you give up Chocolate and Cokes for Lent, you can "cheat" on Sundays and have your fill.) Okay, so I used to love that as a kid, but I have tried to be more disciplined as an adult and make it all the way through to Good Friday with my Lenten discipline. (Bring on all the chocolate bunnies and caramel filled eggs of Easter!!!!)

My downfall has always been chocolate and cokes. I'd say my entire youth was comprised of giving up one or the other every lent. That eventually evolved into trying to give up both for lent where some years were more disciplined than others. :) Recently however, I have been inspired to look at the season in a different light and for the past couple of years I have tried "taking something up" instead of giving something up. Things that I feel will help make me a better person inside and out. This year, I think I will try to combine the two concepts...give up something that doesn't spiritually nurture me in any way and take something up that does. For those of you who are about to enter this period of spiritual reflection, prayer and fasting with me...may each of you be inspired and guided through your own personal journey.

Other than Mardi Gras bead play (above), Fender slept through a much needed hair cut last Saturday.
 

And has been quite the guitar hero...like father, like son. :)And speaking of Daddy, Congratulations to Drewry on passing all his recent exams. He has now earned the ASA and EA credentials after his name after a very long, difficult journey. In a very real sense, it is a second graduation. No more studying...yea! Congrats Daddy, we are super proud of you!