There is a wave of relief in our house with the boys home. All three J-M children slept very very well last night and woke up in fantastic moods.
Everything is back together again.
Meera at Pacifico
Little Miss has been getting so much attention these past few days that she doesn’t even know what to do with it all. (But she does appear to like it!) With the boys away for their first big overnight trip to NH alone with MorMor and MorFar (!!!!!!! big huge big huge deal for ALL involved!!!!!!!), life has been very different around here. Very, very different. Very, very quiet. Very, very calm. Very, very peaceful. Very, very sane. Very, very boring and empty and placid and dull. It has been very eye-opening and we have lots and lots of thoughts about it. Last night we took full advantage of our final night as a simple quiet mobile easy-breezy threesome (the boys come home later today)… and we went out to dinner at Pacifico, a Nuevo Latino place that we love. This is something that we would never do with K & O — they are just simply too loud and way too active for a place like Pacifico. But Little Miss was definitely in her element there, quietly nibbling on avocado from our ceviche, and happily devouring the bread that the servers kept bringing her, and generally being the sweet little sit-still and enjoy-the-scenery girl that she is. She was, of course, good as gold, and stole the hearts of all of the restaurant staff as she smiled and waved and said “hi” and “bye” to them over and over and over in her cute little restaurant-appropriate voice. Braydon and I could not believe that we were out “on a school night” drinking margaritas and eating delicious things and having real conversations and just generally relishing in the extreme loveliness (and recognizing the excessively deep dullness) of having only an angel-baby singleton baby girl for a moment. Little Miss seems to feel exactly the same way that we do: this ‘life-without-K-and-O-thing’ is nice and all, but the sooner they get home the better. Life is definitely interesting-to-an-extreme with them around… and it isn’t always easy to have the constantness of their overflowingness… but we would not trade it for the world. We’re counting the hours until we pick them up at the airport. We can’t wait to get this house all filled up with those wild and crazy boys again.
Grandma Lorraine, Grandpa Les and the Great Grands
We spent Easter weekend at Bement Camp again this year. It was the best ever (click here for last year). This year was especially special because all of the cousins and second-cousins on my entire side of the family were there. Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Les had all of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren together in one place for a day (we came from the states of Washington, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania). K, O, and M got to play all day with all of their second-cousins and it was grand fun. It was a really special time for us all. And the rest of the weekend –including Easter itself (Meera’s first Easter)– was the icing on the cake. We have a whole slew of photos to tell the story and show some of the highlights.
Roadtrip: the 5 hour drive from PA to MA
~Saturday morning, 6:47am: Kyle, Owen, MorFar and Neptune
~Geese on the lake at Bement Camp
~Grandma Lorraine holds Meera on her lap and has all the time and patience in the world for Meera to explore (and then chew on) her sweater buttons
~Braydon and Meera meet baby Ellie
~Merete and Kyle (the boys are in love with Meret and stuck to her like glue for much of the day on Saturday)
~Meera hangs out with Uncle Michael
~Auntie Amina leads the way to the Easter Egg Hunt!
~Ready to look for eggs! (rain cannot stop us!)
~Owen finds one!
~Kyle finds one!
~Owen gives a blue egg that he found to Meera — her first ever
~Later that evening, after the party, before bedtime… the three remaining cousins lay out carrots and celery to entice the Easter Bunny
~Easter Eve — one of the major highlights of this trip for K & O was that they got to sleep on a top bunk for the first time! Both nights they slept together in sleeping bags on this top bunk and loved every minute of it!
~Meera’s first Easter Basket – ready and waiting for her to wake up to on Easter morning
~Kyle’s Basket
~Owen’s Basket
~Easter Morning, 6:10 a.m.
~Owen loving his basket
~Meera loving her Easter sheep
~Nothing like a chocolate bunny at 6:21 on Easter morning
~Sadie and Auntie Stina check out Sadie’s Easter basket goodies
~Kyle — Easter Morning Egg Hunt
~MorFar, MorMor and their four grandchildren, ready for church Easter Morning
~Stina and Sadie
~The J-M’s first Easter as a Party of Five
~In church on Easter morning, looking up to the balcony where they were performing the Hallelujah Chorus (Kyle conducting); Kyle and Owen love this church service — every minute of it — Kyle especially… and they were both incredibly obsessed with hearing the Easter story over and over and over.
~MorMor has always had the touch with Meera, and got her to fall asleep during church
~Out to lunch after church on Easter Day; two tired boys, two happy grandparents (who won’t be able to hold these big boys like this for too much longer)
~Back at Bement Camp, one last hurrah throwing rocks in the lake before the weekend is over
~Owen, Kyle, MorMor, and MorFar head to New Hampshire (that’s right— to New Hampshire! for a 3 night long “sleep over play date” for the four of them only!!!!!!!!)
~Little Miss on the drive home to PA; totally exhausted from a fun-filled first Easter
~Every once in a while it’s good to check in on what music is inspiring our family. In the last few months, the boys’ interest in music has jumped up. More specifically, they are becoming aware of different songs, pieces, lyrics, composers and performers. Their love of music drives their consciousness and it’s really amazing to witness.
Some of the cuter, funnier scenes involve K & O DJing at their little stereos in their room. They often demand we come up and listen to a song they are playing. Here is the list of all three Jammers (J-M’rs) favs :
- Say Hey, Michael Franti
- Truth #2, Dixie Chicks (from the Top of the World Tour live CD)
- Morning from Peer Gynt Suite, Edvard Grieg
- Stir it up, Bob Marley
- 1812 Overture, Peter Tchaikovsky
- Short Ride on a Fast Machine, John Adams
- One thing, Finger 11
- Symphony #5, Beethoven
- Who let the dogs out, Baha Men
- What a wonderful world, Louis Armstrong
- Watch me baby, watch your brother, from I’m going to be a big brother
- December, George Winston
And Meera’s favorite (the boys call it her ‘sleep music’ since we put it on in the car to lull her a bit):
- Wish I could, Norah Jones
It is always an Event.
It was an Event last year (click here), and it was an Event the year before (click here), and it probably always will be.
Egg Dye + K + O = CRAZY
crazy, crazy, crazy.
craziness.
I will admit, it does get easier and less insane each year we do this.
But still, it is C-R-A-Z-Y.
Should have tried to get a video of it, but of course I was way too busy trying to do damage control.
All in all, as C-R-A-Z-Y as it is (think egg dye flying, dripping, puddling, splashing everywhere; think 2 sets of hands semi-permanently stained with egg dye; think uber-enthusiasm… like totally-into-enthusiasm-like-you-probably-would-not-believe-unless-you-could-witness-it-firsthand TIMES TWO; think insanity)… it is a darn good time and a bunch of good laughs too (amidst the mayhem and mega-challenge-to-your-quick-clean-up-reflexes). And this year, for the first time, the boys did blown eggs too (in addition to our traditional hard-boiled) and it was truly very impressive to us that they were able to not only blow the eggs out but that they were able to also not crush the egg shells in the process. Quite impressive given that this is K & O we’re talking about. I can say for sure that they could not have done that a year ago.
Progress, progress.
Next year we’ll add Little Miss to the mix. This year we just gave her the egg dye box to play with. She was more than satisfied with that.
The Egg Decorating Event. A tradition we love (and are also very glad to only do it once a year).
We are within the one-month-zone now. Less than one month until Kyle and Owen’s 5th birthday. They’ve been talking about it here and there since about November, but now — now that it is getting so much closer — we’re hearing about it daily (often multiple times daily). Kyle and Owen love their birthday. And we celebrate it big-time each year (me using it as a great excuse to throw a great big bash). You know the excitement is really building over something when they start playing that thing out in various ways over and over and over during their days. And recently the boys have started in on that phase of the birthday-anticipation. In these photos they are “playing birthday” (as they call it), this time with the cake part of the birthday ritual (there are many variations on the birthday theme, believe me!). They were out in the back yard in their play shed and were so immersed in their play that they didn’t get the least bit distracted by me sitting right there snapping photos. Here they are, singing Happy Birthday to themselves, with the (sand and stick) “candle cake,” slicing the cake, serving the cake, eating the cake. They did this over and over, many times. I’m so glad that I can capture some of these moments in photos because they are just so precious. These kinds of perfect moments make up for all their shenanigans.
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