Happy Easter

Jackson's daycare classroom had an Easter Egg hunt for the kids and their families.  Love it when I get a chance to observe him for a bit before he notices, of course the best part is when he does see us and comes running!

All the kids were a little unsure of what to do at first but soon with their teachers encouragement they caught on to what to do.

This cracked me up, why reach under the car when you can just lift

 it up out of the way to get the egg!

Now he's got the hang of finding those eggs!

Here he is at home discovering that each of those eggs he found actually contained a toy or candy!  So fun to watch him learn new things, his excitement is contagious!

Enjoying a sucker!

On Easter we had breakfast at our house. 

The traditional bunny cake!

Merle had an Easter egg hunt of his own and found a deer leg, later he found the rest of the deer skeleton, complete with skull and spine!

Sick Day

We spent a quiet Good Friday with a sick toddler and his Dad. Took the opportunity to pull out the big camera and get some pictures. I think he's pretty darn cute even when he's sick.

Is there anything cuter than baby feet?

That hand.....

Oh how I love that little furrowed brow.

 Moving in to give 'Giffy' a kiss.

Marching

I can't believe that March has come and gone already.  

Time certainly does not slow down during retirement!

My 97 year old uncle Johnny is not doing well health wise so March has brought visits from two sets of relatives to see him. The first was my Uncle Henry's sons Bobby and Butch who traveled to KC from Utah and Tennessee.  

Here is a blurry picture of us cousins while they were in town.

The second visit was from our cousin Eleanor and her daughter Sherri from California. They came the weekend of my Mom's birthday so we celebrated her birthday with a cookie cake. Unfortunately I did not snap any pictures of people but Sara got one of the cookie cake. We had gone to lunch at the local Baldwin diner and then went to my Mom's place to hang out.  I had reserved the conference room and it worked out as a nice place to gather and eat the cookie cake.  Plenty of room.

As usual, March had a mixture of warm and cold days.  On a couple of the warm days we took advantage of the mild weather and sunshine to spend some time with this little fella.

There is a great playground at the local Catholic school and they have these soft and colorful climb-on critters for the littlest of playground visitors! Later in the month when I picked Jackson up on a cold rainy day he said 'turtles, turtles' because he wanted to go back to this playground, unfortunately that day I had to say 'not today baby'.

Another warm day, this time at our place. Jackson helping his Poppa feed the birds.

Hanging out with MeeMaw.

Back inside to play with the shredded paper again!  Fun stuff!

Toddler Fun!

We had some unseasonably warm weather this February, so one afternoon we picked up this little guy from daycare and headed to Clinton Lake State Park for a fun playdate!

He has grown so much since our last park visit!  He can independently navigate pretty much all of the playground equipment with minimal intervention from us!  Of course we still stayed very close by just in case!  

He had a banana for a snack while he played!

Found this fun idea on Pinterest for a matching game, you hide different printed and laminated shapes in shredded paper and your favorite toddler finds them and matches them up to a printed card.  I made one for Jax and he tried it out Friday evening!

At first he didn't like the shredded paper spilling out of the container and he was busy picking up the wayward escapees and putting them back in the container.  With a bit of guidance from his Mom he found all of the shapes nestled in the shredded paper and then he independently matched them up to the printed shapes!  

Next, he got really interested in exploring the texture of the paper by squishing and lifting it with his hands!  

AND THEN, the real fun began as he scattered the paper every which way, we threw it up in the air and let it rain down on our heads, we put it on each others heads and scattered it all around!  Then he would begin to sing his 'clean up, clean up' song and put it all back in the container only to dump it out and start all over again!

FUN TIMES!!!!!!

Hopefully Susan doesn't mind if I include this Saturday morning yoga picture that Josh texted to us, it is just too darn cute to not share!  Saturday evening he showed us the pictures of the rest of their yoga workout poses and they were all equally cute and well executed by the toddler junior yogi!  Notice he has a post workout water cup and snack conveniently stored on the shelf behind them!

Never a dull moment at their house!

Valentines Day - 2016 vs. 2017

Well, technically both of these were taken on the night before Valentines Day by Josh and Susan, but you get the idea!  What a difference a year makes!

Love this little toddler boy!  He is so sweet and so funny!

EMAW - Dreams Do Come True

Congratulations to Evan, the newest strength and conditioning coach for the Kansas State University Wildcats football team!  Way to go Coach Rapp!

Dreams do come true!

The kids came over for Bobby's birthday dinner the Sunday after Evan received the job offer.  We decided to surprise Evan and show support by wearing K-State gear!

It was fun to watch Evan's grin grow bigger as he came around the corner from the hallway and realized all of these Jayhawk fans were now wearing his favorite shade of purple!

A fun day celebrating Bobby's birthday and Evan's dream come true!

Target Trip

The other day we picked this little guy up at daycare after his nap. Josh had told me that the night before he was really enjoying playing with his wooden puzzles so I decided we'd go on a field trip to Target to get him another wooden puzzle to add to his collection.

He and his parents are regulars at Target but this was the first MeeMaw and PawPaw trip with him.  It was so much fun!  He was so busy looking around at everything.  And especially in the toy aisles he studied everything. I would hand him different items and he would pick one and hand me back the other, I guess he was comparison shopping!  He picked out a puzzle with a Transportation theme which is what they are also learning about at daycare this week!

And then I found these Sesame Street stuffed animals!  

He loves 'Melmo' and Bobby and I decided he really needed all three! I think he was pleased!  Once we got back to his house he sat in his high chair and played with the puzzle for a long time. Then we went downstairs and he played with his stuffed animals, he gathered up the Sesame Street figurines he got for Christmas and matched them up with their stuffed animal twin!

So smart and cute!

I believe he first became acquainted with 'Melmo' from books read at daycare.  This picture is from Christmas morning when the 'Melmo' adoration really began!