Easter Preschool Party

Carson had an Easter party at his preschool on his last day of school before Spring Break, March 29th.  Sara went in for it and again got to witness all the cuteness and silliness that are preschoolers.  Carson was in rare form on this particular day.  He sure had a lot of energy!  You can tell from the pictures below how fast he was moving b/c the shutter speeds on the camera couldn't keep up.  It was quite the humorous morning!  :) 

The kids started with their normal parade through the church.  They do this for every party.  They'll go through to say hello to the pastors and other church staff and then make their way back to their classrooms where the parents are usually waiting.  You can see from Carson being caught in mid-air that he was already super excited! 

Then the parents follow the children and teachers into their classroom, where the children all sit down on their assigned squares to wait quietly until the teachers give them further instruction.

Right after this picture was taken, Carson leaped up, started pumping both his fists in the air, and chanted "Par-TY, Par-TY, Par-TY!"  All the other kids just looked at him for a split second, then most of the boys jumped up and joined in... while most of the girls sat quietly and covered their ears from all the ruckus.  Oh my word, it was SO FUNNY!!  His teacher, Mrs. Hans, started laughing before quieting the kids down and said to me "my college sons were home this week and this sounds like our house!"  Then she asks "is he a frat boy in training?"  LOL!!  Have I mentioned that I love his teachers?  :)

After the children settled down, they got to singing their songs for the parents.  Carson was quite... involved... with all of the movements they do for the songs.  While most of the other kids were quite reserved with their motions.  Like I said, he was really in rare form on this particular day.  :)

My friend, Katie, and mother of the twin girls in Carson's class had her iPhone and shot a few short videos.  You can really get the effect of Carson's energy in these.  :) 

 
After the singing, the children, parents, and teachers all walked down to the fellowship hall for an Easter egg hunt and some snacks.  The children had made their own chick baskets and they were each allowed to find three eggs each.  They had a lot of fun! 

More March Fun!

We have been doing a LOT of bike riding already this spring.  We've gone on quite a few family bike rides and this year Carson rides his own bike with us, rather than riding in the bike trailer.  I'm sure we'll use the trailer for longer rides still, but he has some pretty great stamina and keeps up really well on his own bike.  He is building up some strong little legs, too.  He'll take off riding through the yard with no problems.  Riding in grass is tough, especially with such short little legs.  Not to mention on a heavy bike.  His little 12" bike is heavier than Kevin's or Sara's mountain bikes, its kind of crazy.  But Carson rides it with no problem whatsoever.  And he loves every minute of it! 

Our magnolia trees bloomed super early this year, too.  Sadly, they didn't make it quite to full bloom before we had a hard freeze and all their flowers were killed.  We did get out to snap a couple pics in front of one of the smaller magnolias out back the night before the frost came, though.  They're not the greatest since we hadn't trimmed around the tree since last fall and there is still a metal cage on this one (we had those silly metal cages on probably 95% of the trees in our yard - and we have a LOT of trees - when we bought the house and we're STILL removing them... they're not the easiest things to remove when the trees have way outgrown the cages). 

Then we had a short period with some cold and rainy weather.  So we got the arts and crafts back out.  Carson really loved painting this little wooden racecar and assembling it.  He was so careful with his painting and really takes great pride in it.  I'll have to up date the post later on when I upload some more pics from my camera with the finished car. 

That is one muddy boy!

So much for my boy who wasn't a fan of getting his hands filthy... :)  We've been blessed with a beautiful early Spring this year and we've been taking full advantage of it around our place.  We've worked outside whenever possible - so far, we've cut down (and cleaned up) 3 large trees in the backyard, cleaned up several debris piles in the backyard, pruned several trees, cleaned out the raspberry bed, done lots of weeding and mulching, mowed the grass a couple of times, painted the front door, and just have done a lot of miscellaneous clean up around the yard and property.  Its been very nice to get a head start on all of the normal spring clean up chores, especially this year when we figure we'll have lots of company this summer.  

Of course, even though we've had warm weather, we can't get away from the spring showers... and mud.  Carson is a big fan of the mud this year.  In years past, he wasn't too crazy about getting himself all muddy - he'd want to have his hands cleaned off pretty quickly.  Not so much this year.  On this particular day, he was literally covered in mud from head to toe.  And its kind of difficult to even tell how bad it was in the pictures since most of it had dried and lightened up in color.  He has it all down his legs, inside his boots, all over his clothes, his arms are covered, and he even has some splatters all over his face and hat.  And he got even muddier after I took these pictures... I should have taken more at the end of the day, but I didn't... we just took him straight to the bath.  All I can say is... boys will be boys!  :) 

St. Patty's Day in St. Clair Shores

On St. Patrick's Day, we made plans to visit our friends, the Kozaks, down at their house in St. Clair Shores.  We always have a ton of fun with the Kozaks and St. Patty's was no exception.  Carson had so much fun playing with Seth (5) and Carter (almost 4).  We all hung out at their house for a few hours.  The weather was absolutely beautiful!  Nearly 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.  We brought Carson's bike with us and the boys all had tons of fun riding their bikes in the driveway and up and down the wheelchair ramp in the back.  Kevin also brought his bike so that he and Paul could go riding.  We decided to head to Metro Beach Metropark after awhile to let the kids play at the park.  So Kevin and Paul took off on their bikes to make the 7-mile ride there.  Justine and I loaded up the kids after giving them a head start and headed to the park, too.  The kids all had a ton of fun playing together and the lake was beautiful!  There was quite the breeze off the lake and there were quite a few people out flying kites, which were fun to watch, too.  After the park, we all headed out to dinner at an Irish restaurant for a yummy St. Patrick's Day meal.  Then it was time to take off for us.  We stopped at a baby store in Utica on our way home to pick out and order a chair for the nursery, finally.  We can't wait to go pick it up soon!