Butter and Eggs and lots of Princesses

Saturday morning started out with a trip downtown. Once a year Petaluma hosts a Butter and Eggs Day Parade and celebration which some 25,000 people attend. It celebrates Petaluma's rich agricultural history as one of the premier dairy regions in the country. Together with The Petaluma River, eggs and dairy products created an economy that turned our town into one of the most prosperous communities in the state in the early 1900’s.

We were not able to stay very long as we had nap times to deal with, but we piled the kids in their wagon and wandered around for a while. They were so cute - Arran and Bryttain took turns holding Asia on their laps and she loved every second of it.

Of course Arran wanted to wear his superhero cape, again. I still can't believe how much he loves to wear that thing, especially when we are going out somewhere!

In the afternoon, was cousin Michaelanne's princess birthday party. We'd been looking forward to this for over a month and Bryttain was especially excited to dress up as a princess. Asia was still napping when I needed to leave, so the plan was for James to follow with Arran and Asia when she awoke, and for Bryttain and I to be there for the start of the party. Well as usual all our best plans were shot down.

Our fifteen minute drive to Novato ended up taking two hours (fortunately Bryttain fell asleep for part of it). There had been an accident on the freeway and the traffic was backed up forever. On top of the backed up traffic, James van then started to overheat and I had to pull off at a gas station to let it cool down. Why do these types of things happen when I'm driving his van?!

We finally made it, in time for the last fifteen minutes of the official party! It was so sad! Fortunately, Bryttain did not realize that she had missed out on a 'real' princess who had been at the party, the kids still got to eat cake and bounce in the princess bouncy castle and have fun with their cousins.

The big girls helping Asia


Bouncing princess in the very pink princess bouncy castle (boy knights outside)


Asia completely adores her Uncle Ireland.


The birthday princess herself, after carefully applying her purple lip gloss!

Shear madness?

A haircut has been long overdue for Arran and with the temperature being up to 90 degrees the last couple of days, it was time to take action. We went out to the front porch, armed with scissors and clippers...and now he has a new do, the shortest he's ever had.

He loves it!

I'm still getting used to it, it is a big change.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

This is what greeted me as I walked into the bathroom this morning to brush my teeth.

It took me a few moments to put two and two together, and then it dawned on me that Bryttain, my creative little three-year-old had once again cut her hair. I was so sad and upset. It has taken forever for her last little attempt at hair design to grow out, and her hair is so fine and needs every last strand it can get.

So she now has some interesting 'layers' on each side of her face. At some point this week I may see if I can tidy things up a little (she helped clean up the mess she had made, I'm talking about the mess around her face), but am no expert by any means. Of course she is still beautiful, but it is such a shame to see her with her very poor attempt at a mullet.

The Hunt

It was Easter Sunday, I had prepared in advance; the girls' and my dresses were ironed, I had my mental list of all the things I needed to gather and take with us for the day ahead. Asia's pac 'n play, noise maker, blanket, monitors, booster sit, bib, spare nappies, kitchen sink...well that's what it feels like sometimes. On top of it being a longer day, it was also meant to be an earlier start. Breakfast before church and trying to get all three kids ready on my own, as James had had to leave even earlier for his music practice.

Of course nothing goes as planned and everything that could go wrong did. I had to do more ironing, could not find matching socks for the girls, or cardigans, I snagged my tights on the Velcro on Arran's sneakers as I was reaching past him to strap Bryttain into her car seat, all of which meant we missed the breakfast, but made it just in time for the first song - oh dear.

From then on though, I am glad to report that things did improve. The weather was great and the kids had such fun hunting for eggs. Arran was so serious about it this year, and Bryttain never lets anything stop her anyway (especially if there is candy involved). Asia got right into the swing of it and totally amazed me. They were all so adorable.

After a great lunch at our pastor and wife's house, the kids had another egg hunt and bagged even more goodies. They had so much fun and were fully able to appreciate the real meaning of Easter...candy-filled eggs, right?!

Dying Eggs

Saturday morning we headed over to our friends' house to dye eggs with the kids, for the church egg hunt Easter morning. Between us all we dyed around 140 eggs and filled close to 200 eggs with candy. It's a good thing there were a crew of us as it was no small task.

Bad hair day?

No! Today was 'Crazy hair day' at Awanas, so this was our attempt at being creative.

We added some feathers to complete the effect.

Who comes up with these ideas anyway?

The Birthday Party

With Arran and Bryttain's birthdays being only two weeks apart, the last two years we have taken advantage of being able to do a joint party for them. This is a short-lived period, I am sure. Up until now they have had all the same friends and have been happy to go along with it, plus they each got to celebrate their respective birthdays on the correct days of course.

This year Arran will be starting school and making new friends and their interests are starting to take on different shapes, so the years ahead will most probably have a lot more work involved, but for this year we took the wonderful easy route.

We rented a place called Pump It Up and the kids all got to jump, bounce and slide to their hearts' content for an hour, then we had the party room for cake and presents. It was great! We didn't have to do a huge tidying up session of our house, which of course would have been before and after the party and what we had not realized in advance, was just how much the staff did in terms of helping. It was wonderful, they cut and handed out the cake and helped the kids with the presents, even writing down a list of all they had received.

The children all had so much fun, got a good workout and the parents were able to join in or watch and chat. Best of all, we left them with the mess!

Better late than never...right?

Two days before we left for Thailand, was Bryttain's birthday. She is now a full-fledged three year old, although she has seemed so much older than two, for a VERY long time. Between trying to do laundry and pack, I at least managed to make her a cake, with some fruit on it, which had been her request (Arran had requested a chocolate cake for his birthday).

We had a party for both Arran and Bryttain, earlier that week and I will post photos from that in the next couple of days. I really am so far behind in everything right now. Oh well!