Easter 2012-A Beautiful Day!

I'm a bit behind on postings, but I must get caught up ASAP because tomorrow (Tuesday, 24 April 2012) Joe leaves for 6 months, and I will post weekly if not more to make sure he can read about our family while gone.  First thing's first, time to play catch up on the past month.  For most of the posts, I'm dating them with the date the event occurred, not the date I'm posting.

My catch up posts are starting with Easter because I promised my parents I would post an Easter blog with pics weeks ago.  Sorry, Mommy and Daddy, but better late than never!

Early Easter afternoon the family headed to base for Easter brunch at the club.  It's a good thing Grant was super cute because the food was nothing to brag about.  As you can see from the pics, he was very happy with his watermelon, cantelope, and eggs.  That boy can eat fruit all day long.  He was cheesing it up for everyone there with his smooth dance moves, and that adorable chuckle.  Love him! 

I attached two videos, and while they're more than a couple of minutes long Joe and I love them so I had to include both.  Plus, I'm sure Grammy and Grampy will enjoy watching them since they'll probably only see Grant once in 2012.

Video

I'm still so happy with his fork skills :0)

Cheese!

 After brunch Grant took a very long Easter nap, and then the hunt was on!!!  Poor boy, he literally went straight from his crib to the changing table, and then out for his Easter egg hunt.  I didn't even give him time to fully wake up.  The hunt was just our family in our backyard, and that's a good thing because other kids probably wouldn't have been as excited as Grant was about the treats in the eggs.  When he got to the kitchen I handed him his Easter basket and he was very excited.  He loves collecting things which means he loves baskets.

He still looks asleep in this picture, but he's actually running, and pointing towards the door saying "peas" aka "please".

I added the basketball hoop to the door while he slept so in this pic he is talking about the hoop.   Very cool :0)

 I actually thought I would have to walk with Grant to the first few eggs since this was his first Easter egg hunt, but I couldn't have been more wrong.  As soon as Grant looked from the basketball hoop to the yard he spotted one.  His face changed to stunned excitement, he pointed, yelled "an egg!", took off running to collect the egg, held the egg up to show us, again said "an egg", shook the egg, and put it in his basket.  Immediately he took off for the next egg repeating the same process.  It was hilarious!

Grant running to his first egg.  Can you see the seriousness in his face.  Easter egg hunts are no joke to this boy.

An egg!!!

I love him with that basket. 

Such a professional.  Collecting one egg and looking for the next before putting it in his basket.  Great strategy!

"It another egg!"

When he saw the collection of eggs at the slide he said, "Oh, wow, wow, an egg, egg!"  and ran as fast as those legs could carry him.

Here he is sprinting from one side of our yard to the other pointing and yelling "an egg".  It was not a windy day.  His hair flying back is purely from the run. 

He thought this one was funny.

Cheese!  He finally gave me a minute when after he collected all of the eggs.

I couldn't get him to look away from those eggs!

I apologize in advance for my loud voice in the next video, but you might need to turn the volume up to hear Grant.  

Grant's Easter Egg Hunt Video
http://youtu.be/Slm6xnmWNfw
Click the link above if the embedded video is not working.

Time to open his eggs!

 Grant loves balls so I filled the eggs with little balls, peanut butter crackers, cinnamon animal cookies, and rice chex.  He loved it.  Grant especially thought it was cool that I let him dump all of the treats on a plate and snack on it though out the evening whenever he wanted.  That has never been done before.  Usually we only eat at the table. 

"Ba-ket ball!"

The phrase of the evening "an EGG!"

Once he opened/closed all of the eggs he'd do it all over again.

I especially loved seeing him shake the eggs, and get excited when something was in one.

Our Easter picnic in the living room.

I would say his was on a sugar high, but he didn't have candy in his eggs.

Pure silliness.

Goofball!

YEA!!!  "Ba-ket ball!"

The eggs went everywhere with him.

Can you tell he loved these eggs?

A happy boy!!!

The day was perfect!  At one point I told Joe it was one of those days that I never wanted to end.  It made me look forward to Easter 2013 with our party of 4!!!

The Past Two Weeks

The past two weeks flew by with lots of exciting things happening.  I can't believe I haven't blogged about them.  The most important of the events is our big news....

 

I'm pregnant!!!  Two weeks ago, Wed morning, during my jog I decided to take a pregnancy test that night in hopes that time I would see a plus sign instead of that annoying negative sign I'd seen so many times.  If the test was positive I knew exactly how I wanted to share the news with my family.  I even went grocery shopping after my run, but as such a superstitious person I decided not to buy the Prego in fear that I was jinxing myself.  That night as I was getting ready to give Grant his nighttime milk Joe came home which was a huge surprise since he wasn't supposed to get home until midnight.  Immediately I suggested I take the test and Joe excitedly agreed.  I ran to take the test and was very let down when I saw yet another negative.  I was so disappointed because I was sure I was pregnant.  I yelled out to Joe "I'm not pregnant" in a very woe is me sort of voice.  I took the stick to him so he could see the sad single line, but as he looked at it I thought I caught the glimpse of another line trying to show it's happy vertical self.  Could it be?  "JOE LOOK IT'S ANOTHER LINE!  I'M PREGNANT!!!!" I proclaimed.  "What?  Let me see!" Joe insisted.  I pointed to the screen that held the great news only to hear Joe explain, "No, it has to be two lines.  Look at the directions."  I insisted there were two lines, pushed the stick closer to his eyes, and turned on more lights.  "There, see it?  It's slowly getting darker.  I'm PREGNANT!"  Finally Joe saw it and with the perfect amount of excitement he yelled "I SEE IT!  YOU'RE PREGNANT!"  We jumped up and down hugging, and yelling "we're going to have a baby."  Grant was even really excited.  He jumped off of the couch yelling "YEA" as he ran to us for his share of the celebratory hugs.  It was an amazing moment!  Minutes later I told Joe about my idea for the Prego photo and asked him to keep Grant up while I ran to the store.  We took the photo (I had to stick puffy stickers on the jar to keep Grant from playing with the it) and finally put our little guy to bed about 1.5 hrs late.  I will NOT forget the magic in the air that night.

Later that night my parents were getting home in Houston from their trip to Las Vegas.  Since I couldn't tell them the wonderful news in person I decided to let Grant tell them.  I went online and had  the "Guess Who Is Prego" photo developed at the Walgreens 1hr photo near their house, and texted them to call me when their plane landed.  When I spoke to my mother I explained that I had a photo of Grant taken for them as a present and they had to pick it up from Walgreens before they went home stressing that they had to look at it together.  I wouldn't usually consider myself an exceptionally creative person, but this time I had to pat myself on the back.

The next day Joe flew me out to South Carolina to pick up our new Jeep Grant Cherokee he purchased on Presidents Day.  No, he didn't purchase it in S. Carolina, but that's where the Jeep was because there were all sorts of problems with the trucking company that was supposed to bring it to us.  So we took matters in our hands.  The entire 6 hr drive I was on cloud 9 because of the positive pregnancy test I took the night before.  I finally made it home around 6 pm and had my amazing new Jeep in the garage.  I love it!  As you can see we keep our vehicles around for a long time.

Yes, we are a Jeep family.

That weekend Joe and I took a trip to Savannah, GA for the world's largest St. Patrick's Day celebration.  We planned on making it a family trip, but when my wonderful friend, Candise, insisted on taking care of Grant so we could have a trip together I took her up on it.  I was sad to leave my Grant Bear behind, I even cried when we took off, but I knew he would have a great time with Candise and Brooklyn.  Candise even offered to stay at our house with her beautiful daughter so Grant could be home with his things.  THANK YOU, CANDISE!!!  

A pic Candise sent me the first night.  Grant is enjoying his nighttime milk with his friend Brooklyn.

My sweet boy on St. Patrick's day in his "Little Charmer" shirt.  I planned on that being is Savannah shirt.  Aren't they cute together!

So, Friday afternoon Joe and I jumped into our new Jeep and took off for Savannah.  

And we're off!!!  Yes, that is Joe's mustache for Mustache March. 

When I first heard Savannah had the largest St. Patty's day celebration in the world I was very surprised, and didn't know what to expect, but was ready with my green attire from head to toe.  Literally, even my toes were green!

Joe and me venturing from parking to the action.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 We watched the parade from, my friend, Andrea's sister-in-law's law office building, and it was an amazing spot.  I felt very VIP.  We even had our own balcony and front row seats. 

Andrea and me from our balcony seats.

Handsome even with the mustache!

During our walk to the office Joe and I thought we were at end of the parade so we started walking behind it.  The people in Savannah were so nice.  Everyone was waving to us, so we returned the gesture and waved back.  Once we got to the office we noticed the parade was far from over and we had made ourselves part of it for a good 5 minutes for so.  Hilarious!  It was Ferris Bueller's Day Off! 

My friend took this picture of Joe and me as we were walking to join the "end" of the parade.

Next year Joe and I plan on returning, but this time with a hotel much closer to the action.  We did luck out with an amazing parking spot, but next year a closer hotel is a must.   The day was great with beautiful weather, awesome friends, and of course delicious food.

Enjoying live music in Central Market Park.

Erin and me in St. Patrick's Day mode.