Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to me! Ha!




My Sweet boy, you make my heart go pitter patter. I am so thankful for the day you made me a mommy. The joy that you bring to my heart is incomprehensible. You are my reason for living, for breathing. Your giggles and smiles, your "Shirley Temple" personality and those curls, oh Easton, those CURLS. It all, every single piece of you, makes my heart melt into a puddle of goo. You have us ALL wrapped around your finger. We live for you, to make you happy - really, truly.None of us can get enough of you to satisfy our own selfish desires to just have "one more minute" of "Toe Time". You are our buddy, our love. Your daddy and I are so proud of you. Your Mimi and Boppy want to just eat you up and Ritzy, well, he wants to smother you with kisses of course!

Mother's Day is not about me little boy. It is about you and what YOU have done to ME! With you, I understand a mother's love, I understand my own mother's love and I hope I do HER justice through raising YOU because she is the greatest mother ever, she truly is, I will never be as good as her, but Easton, I will always try and I hope that someday you will say the same thing about me. I love you Bubba.

Mommy.

Tea Time for All!

The Saturday before Easter was a big day for Easton with his egg hunt and then a special tea party birthday for his friend, Avery! Poor Easton is the lone boy is this group of girls (poor Easton, or lucky Easton!?!?!) but he certainly handles his own among all the women!

The tea party was DARLING! Avery's mommy, Vanessa, did such a great job! There was a huge table in the dining room with lots of goodies like tea sandwiches and desserts, it was darling and the special table for the kids to enjoy their tea was a hoot! And the hats for the girls and bowtie for Easton, that were a blast! Vanessa is awfully creative! The kids were so good with their tea and acted so refined - it was adorable to watch!

Tea time for all!

Addie & Easton (look at that darling bowtie Vanessa made!)

Making sure to be careful!

Mason-man trying to get in on the action (okay, so Easton isn't the ONLY boy, but he's the only BIG boy!) :-)

We need to teach Easton cell phone etiquette apparently! :-P

Coloring Eggs and The Big Bunny Hunt!

The Friday before Easter we colored Easter eggs with the Toe. Somehow it ended up turning into a 2 1/2 hour family affair. Everyone suddenly become Picaso! My mom and dad and brother joined us and the eggs looked awfully good if I do say so myself!

Then the Saturday before Easter, I brought Easton to Barnes & Noble for their Easter Egg Hunt and it was a blast! Not too busy, warm and a lot of fun!

Easton finding the golden egg! (There were only a few golden eggs and Easton found one, he got a special prize for it!)

Easton was really proud of his very full basket!

Easton looking at his special prize for finding a golden egg! A B&N gift card!

Rasing his basket when the gal hosting the hunt asked if everyone had a good time and found lots of eggs :-)

Coloring his special Easter picture :-)

Meeting Peter Cotontail, he greeted him with a nice, firm handshake! What a gentleman!

He really loved Peter!!!!

Easton LOVES to Cook!

Easton LOVES to be a big helper! He is always asking to help Ryan with his chores and to help me with the laundry....but his favorite way to help is through cooking! So, I try to have a little cooking project with him every once in a while! For Easter we made rice krispie easter egg treats with m&m surprised inside!



In his glory!



Cheese!




He adores mixing!

Eating all of the marshmellows, I'm surprised we actually had enough for our treats! Ha!

Easy does it!

What marshmellows, mom!?

Helping me with the M&M surprise!

It's a really cute little project and we had so much fun!

Catch up....

I have been awful at taking pictures and video lately, makes me sad - but I think I have given up because I never am able to get a good picture of Easton anymore! He's a mover and a groover - "No time for photo ops, Mom!"

But, I do have a few snapshots from some of our adventures since the last time I posted....Enjoy....

In March we took Easton to Civic Theater to see, "The Stinky Cheese Man". We brought Easton to Civic Theater to see a show last March and he enjoyed it immensely so we decided to do it again this year! We want our little man to be cultured and well rounded, that includes theater! We had a lot of fun, but we all enjoyed the show, "Aunt Jemima Puddle Duck" more last year ;-)

Mommom and Easton at the theater (see what I mean about getting pics? This was the best one out of about....hmmmm....30???? LOL)

After the theater we took Easton out for dessert!

He got to pick out what he wanted! <3

Then, towards the middle of the month, Easton went bowling for the first time ever and he LOVED IT! We got invited to go for his cousin, Chase's, birthday and he couldn't stop talking about how much fun he had! He told me on the way home from the alley, "Daddy needs to bowl with us, he'd love it!" I think you're right, E-toe!

(Getting really excited about his throw!)

Then on St. Patrick's Day, my girlfriends asked if we wanted to all meet up at the zoo for some fun! It was such a beautiful day!!!! We had a great time at the zoo and then lunched it up with burgers and Shamrock shakes at McD's afterwards (of course!)

Do you want to go how to get a good picture of three toddlers and 2 babies????

Yeah....I do too!!!!

There's a trick to getting a good photograph of them all, I know there has to be a trick....

But....I have yet to find it!!!! LOL

Then, I don't know when we did this anymore, end of March, maybe!? Time blurrs together! :-) But, my parents joined Ryan, Easton and I in the afternoon at Tavern on the Square and then we went to the Cottage and Lakefront Home Expo downtown. We had a blast!

Here is a picture of the "Work is overrated" crew. It seriously is SO overrated. So, those of us who do work, just blow it off (hello, being your own boss RAWKS!) and we go have fun! .... Life's too short!!!!

Easton totally dug the ginormous sandbox at the expo!!!!

Until next time!!!!

Birthdays Smirthdays.

My birthday was March 1st. How old am I now, you ask? 27. I've got 3 more years until the big 3-0. What did I do to celebrate? Ate a load of mussels, a huge lobster and drowned my aging sorrows in large glasses of red sangria. Good thing I have a wonderful family to help me celebrate. I may need a lot of consoling 3 years from now! Ha! :-)

The flowers my daddy got me! If you know my dad, you know how huge this is. He rarely leaves the house without my mom and he most certainly doesn't go into the stores, especially without my mom's orders. He went to the store, by himself, on his own accord, because he thought to buy me flowers for my birthday. Best present ever. What is it with girls and their daddys? He'll always be so special to me. <3

Boppy's Special Adventure!

Two Saturdays ago, my folks went to go check out a boat in Hastings that they wanted to purchase for their lake. It was a gorgeous day, so Ryan said "Hurry up, let's go with them and enjoy the day!" ....So we hopped into the Enclave and out for a drive. Easton kept insisting we were on a trip and our trip then turned into an adventure of going to different restaurants (none of which met our standards, so we up and left! Ha!) and ended up at Founders (hate the atmosphere, loved our sandwiches....). It was just a fun day of laughs and the unexpected, definitely a great way to beat the winter blues! So we decided we would do this every Saturday until the weather got nicer.

So, last week my dad decided our special adventure for that coming Saturday should be a big surprise for Easton! So he planned for us to take a snowy drive to Grand Haven to see the Pere Marquette train, it is a beautiful old steam engine that has been restored and sits in a park near the water. When we drove up, Easton was in awe and exclaimed, "POLAR EXPRESS!" It was very magical for the little man! <3>

Easton was SO excited to see "The Polar Express" <3

He couldn't stop talking about, he just chattered away....

Easton asked to touch it, he had to get his hands on this train, so we snuck in! ;-)

Easton and his best buddy, Boppy!!!!

Looking inside the train....

My dad kept pointing out all of the features in the train that you also can see in the movie "The Polar Express" which made this experience even cooler for E-toe!

The caboose!

Oh puh-lease, get a room you two!

Dad, not sharing his dessert. He seriously didn't share. My mom had to lick the plate to get even just a taste. ;-P