Donkey, Party Hats, Easter Eggs and Dates

I'm gonna organize this blog post by categories:  Donkey, Party Hats, Easter Eggs, and Dates.  Happy Reading!!

Donkey:  Happy Easter! I know this is a little late, but we find our weeks getting busier and busier.  Our first Easter as a family of five was great! Palm Sunday was a hit with our kids, not because of the palm branches but because there was a donkey at church and Jesus was there too! When we picked up our kids from Sunday School and asked how it was, they said that Jesus lived at the farm with a donkey.  I think that's pretty close to the actual story. 

Party Hats:  It's kind of weird having birthdays when you are an adult.  It is actually really difficult to celebrate how we used to.  For my birthday, back in January, Nicki ordered in my birthday meal (Red Lobster) and birthday cake (Culvers).  It was super sweet, because she is super sweet. So when Nicki's birthday came around (March 27th) it was my turn.  I figured what would any new parent love for their birthday?  A birthday party with your spouse and kids.  So, I went out and got party hats and horn blower things from the dollar tree and we all sang happy birthday to Nicki at breakfast!  It was pretty sweet.  Our oldest was inquisitive about why the horn blower wasn't making any noises.  Our younger daughter was obsessed with the party hat.  She asked us to take many pictures of her, which we did (wish we could put those on here, they are adorable).  Our son, was completely obsessed with getting his breakfast and basically threw a tantrum through the end of the birthday song.  Well, I tried.  Nicki was happy and a little surprised.

Easter Eggs:  Our Easter weekend was full of fun with family.  On Friday, we laid low as a family and then on Saturday we had a visit from Aunt Alissa and soon to be Uncle Aaron.  They brought their first Easter baskets of the year.  They were filled with more toys than candy, which is a better fit for our family.  They spent all afternoon hopping around with their new toys and getting ready for church.  After church on Sunday, we took a drive down to see Grandpa Jeff and Grandpa Lisa (we're still working on the word "grandma"), Uncle Ryan and Aunt Josie.  Grandpa and Grandma gave them their first easter egg hunt.  Since it was still winter outside the hunt took place inside, but the kids didn't care, they found eggs filled with jelly beans and stickers.  The stickers dropped right to the floor and the jelly beans went right in their mouths.  It was a great visit.  We ate a lot, well I ate a lot (my tradition at the youngs) and we let grandpa, grandma, aunt and uncle chase our kids around and play with them.  Let's just say they were tired when we left.  But we did have a blast and even tried to do some outside stuff in the cold weather.

Dates:  Nicki and I had two dates recently.  For the first, we went out to Sprecher's Restaurant in  Wisconsin Dells and sampled an array of specialty sodas and each had a pretty good black bean burger.  It ranks as the 2nd best we've ever had (the Blue Door Pub, in St Paul still holds first place).  The date was awesome!  We relaxed, we talked, we planned, and we discussed our future vacation plans and budgets, which if you know us, we enjoyed very much.  One of the hardest things we've found so far is getting away to go on dates.  We have no problem leaving our kids for a couple of hours, but its expensive to go out to dinner and pay a babysitter.  Then when we do need a babysitter we have to get all of our babysitters state approved.  Kind of a mess, but when we can take advantage of free babysitting from grandpa and grandma we'll take it!

Yes, I did say we had two dates recently.  The first was to Sprecher's the second was actually a court date.  It was our first adoption related court date that we've had and we were a little nervous about it.  It didn't take long but we sat with our social worker as the judge looked over the permanency plan.  We were just there if the judge had any questions.  He did.  He asked us if we were still planning on adopting the kids, if we thought we could handle three kids, and how old we were.  When we told him we were 29 he was surprised.  I guess we looked really young to him.  Anyway, things went well.  No surprises.  We are still moving towards adoption in August.

Check out these pics and thanks for reading!
 

The snow was melted but it was still not warm enough to go the park.  We did anyway!

Grandpa explained to our 3 year old that if she let go of the string the barbie kite would be gone forever.  Moments later she looked at Grandpa and said "I'm gonna let Barbie go now."  Grandpa got a workout.

Aunt Josie took an adorable family picture that we wish we could share.  But here is a pretty adorable one of us!

Another picture of us.  Date Night Fun!