Easter Party!

Today my mom's group had an Easter party at our house. There were a total of 8 children between the ages of 8mo and 3...it was CRAZY, CRAZY FUN! It was soooo wild and there were kiddos EVERYWHERE and running in all different directions and someone was always into something but I think we all had a great time...I love these crazy moments...it seems in the middle of the crazy moments you make some of the best memories.
One of my favorite memories of the day is after we ate lunch the kids were running around and I was in the kitchen and happened to turn around and see this:

Kenzie, Emmie, and Lucy

The girls (Lucy, Emmie, and Kenzie) were under my dining room table with a bag of chips chowing down! I told Brooke, who I know from college, that I had a flash forward to those girls in college sitting around in a dorm room snacking and talking just like we used to do. (KP...remember the late night Wal-Mart runs to get ice cream with our spoons in tow?)

Anyway, after everyone got to the house Ellie went down for her nap and we set out to dye some eggs. I put a card table flat on the ground outside and covered it with newspaper and that worked great. It didn't matter of the dye spilled and people weren't fighting over seats since it was on the ground.

Some of the kids were interested and some lost interest pretty quick. Emmie had a great time dying her eggs.

Funny story...Christina told Emmie to go ahead and put her egg in the dye and she THREW it across the table and knocked over the blue dye.

Everett and Brooke

Lucy, Kenzie, Jackson

Mikey, Jackson, Emmie

I kept trying to get Jackson to look at me and show me his egg but he kept looking at his egg and saying "cheese"...haha!

She sat so patiently waiting for her egg to be ready and then would fish it out of the cup and carry it carefully over to the carton so it could dry.

waiting...

checking the egg...

still waiting...

still waiting...a little messier by this point..

YAY! Finally the egg is ready!

After the eggs dried she enjoyed sitting with Lucy and Mikey and decorating her eggs with the glitter paint.

After dying eggs and playing on the swingset and in the sandbox for a bit we took the kids in for lunch. We had everyone's favorite chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and some AMAZING fruit and a yummy dip. Carissa brought some pasta salad when they came at the end of lunch (Will had school today) and it was delicious as well! I'd also made some bunny gingerbread cookies which turned out great (it was my mom's recipe and if you've ever had her cookies you know I had a lot to live up to!).

My sign says "happy easter"...I need to outline the letters.

bunny cookies

our yummy food

picnic in the den!

While everyone was eating I went and hid all the eggs (Dana brought 100! I was glad I was hiding them for little kids...big kids would have been disappointed with the lack of a challenge!) and then after lunch we took the kiddos out to hunt. I think Emmie would have been happy with just one or two eggs. She was much more interested in opening them than in collecting them. She was so funny...she wouldn't put the egg in her basket until she'd opened it up...guess she was planning to throw back any that didn't live up to her standards..haha!

Emmie and Lucy

Emmie and Kenzie

Will and Lucy

After egg hunting the kids played and the moms chatted and everyone slowly filtered out.

Days like today make me realize just how blessed I am to have such wonderful mommy friends that I can share this season of my life with. I'm also very glad that my girls have such sweet friends. I wish I had the words to convey how special this group of kids is to me. Emmie loves her friends so much and they all get along really well. They are all so sweet to Ellie and I love knowing that she has a ready made group of friends to play with when she's big enough to run around with them!

On a side note...after everyone was gone I put the girls down for naps and was cleaning up when I noticed Franklin was no longer on the couch. I figured he was in our bed so I went and looked but he wasn't there. I assumed he was around somewhere and I continued cleaning. I went to put something up in the girls' bathroom and there was Franklin laying in the doorway of Emmie's room...he's her little guard puppy apparently!

Sunday Style Section

Apparently it's been a long time since I did a Sunday Style Section!

I love this little giraffe outfit. Emmie looks so good in dark colors.

Love the little sailor dress. Emmie only got to wear it a few times but I think Ellie's going to get a fair amount of wear out of it...the advantage to having kids at opposite times of the year...if one doesn't wear an outfit much the other will wear it a lot!

Twins!

This was Emmie's bathing suit when she was Ellie's age..I love it and I'm so glad we could reuse it!

Emmie's suit. It's really hard to find one piece bathing suits for toddlers but I'm definitely not buying my 2 year old a bikini! I managed to find a cute little suit with lots of ruffles at Target :)

I love this little yellow and blue outfit. Perfect for spring!

Doesn't she look like a little cupcake?

Didn't get great pictures of this dress but you can see the collar which is the best part...she's a little flower! Also, if you ever wonder why my kids always have bows one reason is because when Ellie was wearing this outfit she got called a boy TWICE because her bow had fallen off in the car. We won't mention the fact the pants are covered with flowers and her shirt also has flowers on it!

LOVE LOVE LOVE this outfit! Next time she wears it I'm going to get a picture of her standing up. The pants flare and they are sooo cute.

We pulled out the spring outfits this morning for church. Ellie's is a little Strausburg dress (from the old Strausburg before they got bought out and stopped selling adorable dresses but that's a tirade for another day) and I think Emmie's is a Rosalina...not positive though and too lazy to get off the couch to go look.

Closeup of Emmie's dress.

Close up of the little chick on Ellie's collar. Wish I could have gotten her to sit up so you could see the dress better.

Recovering

So we've kind of been a sickly group this past week. I'll run down the list of characters for you.
Ellie - She's started up with a cold right before we went to Greenville 2 weeks ago and by the end of the week she had developed a congested cough. I wasn't worried because the last time she had a cold she got a cough at the end of the cold and it went away after a few days. This time however she started making a wheezing sound after she would cough or play a lot. Fortunately she was still sleeping good! I had to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday last week so Paul was going to take her to the doctor on Saturday morning to get checked out.
Emmie - Emmie was perfectly fine the whole time. Friday night when I got home from work Emmie was still awake so I went in and said hi to her and we talked for a few minutes..she was great. Fast forward to 11:45pm when I'm woken up by a seriously awful croupy cough. Poor Emmie sounded horrible and was so upset. I thought she must have croup and I was concerned about her because of how quickly it had come on so I slept in her room until about 4am when I went back to my bed since she hadn't gotten any worse...and I use the term sleep lightly. So I left a note for Paul (who slept through the whole thing including a conversation but how he needed to come in Emmie's room and wake me up when my alarm went off) to get Emmie checked out as well while they were at the doctor.
The Mama - I woke up Saturday morning with itchy ears, a sore throat, and stuffiness...sure signs of allergies...ugh. Combine that with the fact that I didn't sleep Friday night or Saturday night and I worked 3 days in a row and I was pretty worn out by Sunday night! I still have quite the runny nose but am well on my way to recovery...and I'm grateful for every drop of rain we get!
Paul and Franklin - Luckily they are just fine...plus Paul survived a trip to the doctor where both girls had to get checked out!

Doctor's office - So Paul took both girls to the doctor Saturday night. He said Emmie just had allergies and Ellie had bronchitis. So Ellie got a nebulizer and we've been giving her Albuterol 3 times a day. She's done so well with the breathing treatments! Especially impressive is that we have to get her up at about 10:30 at night to do one and she goes right back to sleep!

Bump in the road - Paul went and got Emmie some Claritin and we gave her that Saturday and Sunday night. She was up much of the night Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night and she seemed so miserable. She would say "ow" everytime she coughed and everytime you touched her. It was heartbreaking. Paul said she acted fine during the day but I think the allergies were catching up to her at night. Monday morning poor Emmie woke up and looked MISERABLE. Her eyes were so, so swollen and red and they were so watery it looked like she was constantly crying. So pitiful. She had a horrible, congested cough as well. Being the trooper she is, she acted like nothing was wrong. After we got to Summerville I went and got her some Zyrtec and she definitely slept better Monday night...she was still coughing a lot but her cough wasn't waking her up and it sounded a bit drier. So we've been giving her Zyrtec at night and Claritin in the morning and yesterday morning she finally started looking better and her cough seems much better...eyes are still puffy but no reddness.

Follow up - Today we had Ellie's follow up appointment and were given the go ahead to wean her off the Albuterol...yay! While we were there I told the doctor about all of Emmie's troubles and so he checked her out and said her lungs sounded fine...I was much relieved. (For the record, I keep my stethescope at work so I never have it when I need it at home to listen to the girls!)

We finally seem to be on the mend and hopefully we'll be well for a bit..I'm ready or things to be back to normal!

Summerville Trip

The girls, Franklin, and I went to visit Paul's parents and brother in Summerville this week. We had a great time while we were there.
Emmie has been walking around for weeks carrying her shovel and saying she needs to go to the beach so Tuesday we went to the beach. Papa took the day off work and came too! Debbie Baker (who's friends with the Edwards) has an oceanfront house at Folly and she was so kind to let us use it for the day! It was soooo nice to have a place to put all the stuff you bring when you go anywhere with two small children and it have a good place to take Emmie to the potty (she can sometimes get funny about going in public bathrooms). It was also nice to have somewhere to eat lunch and we were able to wash the girls up before we left to go back to Summerville. When we took her up on the offer we didn't realize just how big of a difference it would make having the house! We stayed out at the water for about 2 hours and then ate lunch and enjoyed the beautiful view of the ocean from the house. Ellie enjoyed the beach although she was a little cold in just her bathing suit. She got a little upset that we wouldn't let her eat sand but she loved splashing in the water of the little pool we dug for her! Emmie had the BEST time at the beach. She didn't care how cold the water was  (it wasn't horribly cold but definitely cool) she kept going back to play in it more. She loved digging in the sand. Poor thing cried a little when we told her we had to leave. We told her we'd come back again and she said "tomorrow?". She's definitely my child..loves the beach! (Plus the ocean air...aka non pollen filled air...was good for her HORRIBLE allergies...more on that tomorrow...we're a sickly crew.)

Sleeping on the way to the beach. I LOVE this picture! Also, I'd never noticed that Ellie has the same lip shape as Emmie...I think it's so beautiful.

Loving the water!

Happy to be at the beach.

Ellie had a great time playing in/eating the sand. 

Tongue out like her sister!

Ellie's feet were playing peek-a-boo!

On Wednesday morning Gin-g and I took the girls to the Charleston Children's Museum. The girls had lots of fun and so did Gin-g and I!

Watching golf balls go round and round.

Captain Ellie!

Ellie LOVED the puppets!

Wednesday night I went and met my friend Susan for dinner in Charleston. We at the bar at Husk and it was delicious. I had never heard of the restaurant but it has won some awards and nothing is allowed in the kitchen that isn't produced in the south. The menu changes everyday depending on what is at the market! I had an AMAZING bbq sandwich and Susan had some REALLY good wings...the glaze was perfect...and some fried bread and butter pickles. We also shared a cheese platter (of course I loved that!).  I hadn't had a long conversation with Susan in around a year and it was so nice to catch up!

On a side note...one of the patients at work had painted my nails a pretty coral color over the weekend and so all week Emmie has been telling me how pretty my nails are so Paul's mom had some kiddie nail polish so Wednesday afternoon we painted Emmie's nails. They turned out so cute and she LOVED them! I don't know what brand the polish is but it comes off in the bath. A bit annoying because it meant we had to paint them again the next day but VERY nice because I know that if it gets on anything (very likely since it's hard to convince a toddler to hold still for her nails to dry) it will come off easily!

We had so much fun in Summerville and we enjoyed all our adventures and we also had some sweet visitors...Gerry and Rita Purvis and Joy Patterson all stopped by to see the girls!