Happy Easter & Spring Training

Happy Easter! 

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We hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday. 

The kids had fun decorating Easter eggs!  It was so fun for Eric to pick out all the colors he wanted this year.

While, Ella wrote little messages on the eggs

We even experimented with mixing colors for a rainbow shade of eggs.

The did a great job working together, getting all the eggs ready for the Easter Bunny.

This year, we asked the Easter Bunny to hide the eggs at Mimi and Pa's (Maria's parent's) house.  We had one too many instances, where the dogs would eat the eggs before the kids had a chance to find them all.  Here they are ready for the Easter Bunny to carry them over to Mimi and Pa's

Eric was surprised to find his basket filled with different sports balls and goodies!

Ella was over her head in bunny gifts!  Including, a butterfly habitat.  We will 

Eric enjoyed a little extra surprise from Mommy and Daddy.  A new bike for Eric (Cousin Seth's old bike), as Cousin Seth had outgrown it and we though it would make a wonderful Easter gift as Eric was just reaching the height limit on his bike.

Eric wouldn't ride his old bike once the yellow machine came out.  We had to lower the seat all the way, but now he is riding well and pedaling on his own.  He needs to build some leg muscles to push those pedals up some of our hilly streets, but he's definitely working hard at it.

Ella enjoyed her new legos from the Easter Bunny.  Lego has finally came out with a cute set of legos just for girls.  The Easter Bunny found a perfect one with a girl on a tractor with a bunny riding behind.  It even included a little garden and bunny house.  Ella put it together all by herself and we realized she definitely ready for some more big kid toys.

We had a quite Easter Egg hunt and brunch with Maria's parent's, as we were informed in the morning that the Easter Bunny had in fact hidden eggs at Mimi and Pa's house. 

Ella had a good time helping Mimi with the pancakes.

and Eric was in charge of helping with the eggs.

Ella has been asking to climb the trees in our yard for some time and Ken finally decided to show her how it's done.  Ken only hopes he can have them rock climbing next!

 

It didn't take long before Eric joined in on the fun!  He knew just what to do!

Maria has been diligent about getting the kids outside and staying active, since it's warmed up.  They have now set a daily morning walk to help with some of that Spring Fever, during the school day. It definitely breaks up and is a great way to start the day.

They enjoyed a walk and a picnic at the neighborhood park, a mile round trip (but with lots of hills).  The kids had a blast and enjoyed the walk over!

Eric will almost always opt for the slide, while Ella loves to swing high like the birds.

However, on the way home the kids really had to push themselves up those hilly streets.  Let's just say they're not ready to make that walk again anytime soon.

Ken and the kids put the water walls up for our tomatoes, but left the planting for our school activity.  So, the kids and I had fun getting our tomatoes in the ground.  Here they are with their new planting aprons. (Yes, that's Eric behind the tomatoes).

Spring training has started and Eric is no exception!  Eric had been asking to join soccer, but since we missed the cut-off and I couldn't find a team for him this Spring we found a wonderful T-Ball team for him to join.  Eric absolutely loves T-Ball, as he will tell you.  

Here he is running the bases!

He had a great Coach on his 1st practice!  Coach is showing him some fundamentals!

Good Coaching!  Eric seems to have it down and has a great pitch!

Hopefully, I'll be able to snap some pictures and video of him hitting and catching.  Ella's Karate class is during T-Ball, so I had to break out early to get Ella to class and Ken was able to stay and play ball with Eric.  We are so excited that Eric has found a new passion!

Old & New!

We had said for years that we needed to find a way to add more heat to our forever chilly family room.  The wood burning fireplace was putting out very little heat on those very cold Colorado winter days; therefore, the room was not getting much use.  Finally, after seven years and two kids we gave in when we realized we really needed the extra space.

We spent a few weeks getting bids and pricing out different fireplace options and eventually decided on  adding a gas fireplace that would heat the room more efficiently.  So, the construction began.

Two weeks later, our beautiful fireplace was complete.  We now have a very warm and inviting family room.  We put up our old 45" TV that had been collecting dust in the basement, since we moved back from South Carolina (there was no where to put it previously).  

We are so pleased with how it turned out.  It takes just a short time to heat the entire room.  We now find ourselves spending a lot more time here reading, playing, or enjoying our weekly family movie night.

Just as the fireplace was nearing completion, Maria celebrated her 36th birthday.  However, at the stroke of midnight of her birthday Maria had quite the scare.  Nothing says your getting old, then a ride in an ambulance and a trip to the ER for high blood pressure and possibly a heart attack.  

Luckily, Maria's blood pressure and other pains subsided and she was released from the hospital in the early hours of her birthday.  The doctor's requested she follow up with her own physician and to monitor her blood pressure closely.  She is currently working with a physician.

Much to Maria's surprise, she awoke a few hours later to her much anticipated birthday present.  

Maria had been asking for a bicycle for some time, as the kids have been zooming around on their bicycles and she was having a hard time keeping up with them now.  This very nice Schwinn bicycle is perfect for our camping trips and rocky roads where we live.  Now to get Ken a bicycle .

The kids had a wonderful treat, as we invited Cousin Seth over for a movie night to watch "Dolphin Tale" with our new fireplace & TV.  

They had a wonderful time together!  Ella and Eric so enjoyed having Seth over and both wanted to sit next to him. Ella couldn't help but chat with Seth throughout the movie.  They devoured our own version of "Movie Theatre" popcorn.  What a wonderful time they all had and we are so blessed for the kids to be able to  spend time together, even if it is sparingly.

Eric has been reluctant to try out his new bicycle he received for Christmas, as he has tried to figure out how to pedal.  Although, his balance bike helped him learn how to balance he was very nervous to add the pedals.  We added the training wheels for a few days to give him some reassurance when pedaling and it seemed to do the trick.

We still have to encourage Eric to keep pedaling, but know it will be just a matter of time before he's zooming around like his big sister.

We've started a few cold weather seeds in our garden a coupe weeks ago and realized if we want to actually see the fruits of our labor we would have to extend our fence to keep the deer out.   Ken spent last weekend working on a lattice addition, which we think came out really well. 

We're at 7ft now, so hoping this will keep out the garden guests (AKA the deer).  

During our trip to the garden center for some seeds and tomato plants, we spotted this beautiful 4 in 1 Apple Tree, which is self-polinating and of the dwarf variety.

So, beautiful and already flowering.  This dwarf Apple will grace our backyard, behind the hot tub.  Eventually, we hope it will give us more backyard privacy and of course some great apples!  Ken is hard at work on building a deer fence for this baby, until she's tall enough to outreach the deer.

Ella and Ken spent last Sunday afternoon, working on a chair for "Bunny."  Ken used some scrap wood from our garden fence addition and came up with such a cute chair for Ella and Bunny.

Only a few weeks into Spring and we're off to a wonderful start!  We even received a little moisture in the form of snow on Tuesday.  Colorado is always unpredictable!  Just so you can see how much are temperature's vary, I leave you with this picture of Eric from this morning.....

Snowball, Rain Boots, and Shorts are the perfect attire for Colorado's Spring weather!