Easter and Snow

Here are some pics from Easter weekend...

 

Caitie and I made Krispy Easter Eggs. They're made like the regular Rice Krispies Treats, except they're egg shaped and decorated. I got the idea from the Pioneer Woman's blog. They turned out kinda cute. We did this on the Friday before Easter.

 

We went to Woods Canyon Lake the next day (saturday). The lake area was closed, which is unusual, but we made the best of it. We found patches of snow on the ground. The girls had a blast. Here Caitie is throwing a snowball at me.

Caitie loves snow.

Bailey tried to build a small snowman but her hands got cold and she gave up. We didn't bring mittens... I didn't know it was cold enough for there to be snow on the ground. I guess I should have checked the weather conditions first? um, yeah...

 

Michael throwing a huge clump of snow in the air. It was pretty cool lookin' when it would smash on the road.

Walkin' down the road...

Michael suggested I take some pics with the camera on the road. Here is what I got... I like how they turned out. There was no traffic due to the road being closed to vehicles, so it was a good time to take these kind of pics.

All four of us are in this pic; I used the self-timer for this one.

 

 When we got home on Saturday night, we colored Easter eggs. Everyone got to bed pretty late that night, especially me. After everyone went to bed, I had to get the girls' Easter baskets ready and the egg hunt clues printed, etc. About the time I got to bed, Caitie came and got me up to go huntin' for her Easter basket. ha

While Caitie was out of school for Spring Break, we did some craft projects. One of them was this bunny. I had fun makin' it. I put the first clue on his feet. I put the clues inside plastic Easter eggs.

Lookin' at the clue...

 

Here they are after finding their Easter baskets.

After they went through their Easter baskets, they went on an egg hunt in the house and then out back.  They looked for the colored eggs inside, and the plastic eggs filled with money, little rubber balls, and candy, out back. 

They both got 'grabbers', for lack of a better term, to help pick up the eggs they found. It's the lazy way to pick up the eggs; can't have them using all their energy bending over and reaching up, etc. ha Yes, I put one of the plastic eggs up in a tree.

I got the girls coloring books and regular books explaining the real meaning of Easter. Here is Caitie reading her book.

 

I suggested we go get some Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. Yum! Caitie picked a blueberry muffin, but ate her share of the donuts as well.

I got a pretty bracelet craft to put in Caitie's Easter basket. Each 'jewel' and bead means something... the clear means 'purity', and the other jewels/beads have meaning as well. It's to teach what God expects from His children. It has a cross charm as well. She did a good job putting it together; I think it's pretty.

 

I made a nice ham dinner and we finished watching The Bible program that was on the History Channel at dinnertime. Bailey conked out while I was makin' dinner. She loves her yellow bunny and chick, and Caitie's purple bunny as well.

We had a nice Spring Break, with the exception of  Bailey being sick for part of it (with a cold), and a nice Easter. :)

  

  

   

   

   

   

 

  

On and off the field she's a star with good character

I do these kind of posts mostly for my benefit. It's so I can remember how Caitie is doing in school each semester. My memory isn't the best, so I'm not sure if I've included everything or not. Below are a few pics from the last few weeks...

 

Caitie's class, along with all the other first grade classes, went on a field trip to the Desert Outdoor Center at Lake Pleasant in February. Caitie went there last July at Summer Camp, and enjoyed it as much this time around as she did then. She's interested in the history of Arizona and desert life, etc. Here she is the morning of the field trip. The kids took sack lunches with disposable water bottles for their lunch. I put sunscreen on Caitie and she wore a hat. Most of their time was spent outside on the field trip, so I wanted to make sure she didn't get sunburned.

 

 

The classes were boarding the bus... a second bus came just after I took the two pics below.

 

 

Bailey waiting to wave at the buses.

 

I took this pic after picking Caitie up from school. She got a park ranger badge at the end of the field trip.

 

Caitie was picked as Star Student the week after the field trip. All the kids are picked at some point, and it was finally Caitie's turn. She had to fill out and color the poster shown in the pic below and fill out a page in a journal. When she told of the important things in her life, the first thing she wrote was her love for God and Jesus. So sweet. :) She also had show & tell and spoke in front of the class.

 

Here is what she took for show & tell. We went hiking and found this lava rock; it's the shape of a heart.

 

 

This isn't the best pic... it was 'turn your back on disrespect day', which is one of the Character Counts days; the kids were to wear a yellow shirt backwards. So in this pic Caitie is wearing a yellow sweater backwards and she's soaked from the pouring rain. It was a windy, cold, rainy day. Here she's holding her 'star student' award and ribbon.

 

 

These are pics I took of Caitie for each Character Counts Day.

 

On one of the Character Counts days she wore green with crazy socks. Caitie asked Bailey to help her color her white socks with markers. Gotta love her worn-lookin' shoes. 

 

On another day that week she wore purple. This happened to be on the student-led conference day. You don't actually meet with the teacher unless you feel you need to, you are led by your child around the room while they explain what each area is and what they do each day. You then pick up their report card. I did talk with the teacher a bit. She told me Caitie's doing really well and that she's ready for second grade. I took a quick pic of them together.

 

This is a board outside her classroom. Each child had a Dr. Seuss report and picture on the board. Caitie's is above where she's standing. (bailey was dressed in purple too for 'citizenship day')

 

 

Caitie's holding her report card. It was the same as the other two she received this year. I hope she keeps up the good work. :)

 

Field Day was held on the last Character Counts Day. The kids were to wear rainbow colors. It was a half-day of school. The kids do all kinds of games on the field. Caitie was in a relay race in the first pic below. She's the one with a pink top and a beige hat. 

 

Here she is playing 'flag tag'.

 

I didn't go on the field this time due to having to deal with Bailey wanting to run free and getting in the way of the activities. So we stayed on the other side of the fence. Here she is playing in some dirt by the fence. She had fun.

 

 

Caitie was in a water race below. She's in the pink top. She's not wearing her hat; she took it off about halfway through the activities.

 

 

That weekend was St. Patrick's Day. She still believes there's a leprechaun. She got into this due to a leprechaun trap project she did in Kindergarten last year. So I went along with it again this year and helped her build a trap. I also gave her clues to find items in the morning and through the day. It was fun.

 

 

I didn't get a good pic of the girls on St. Patrick's Day, but I did take this quick pic the next morning before taking Caitie to school. Caitie looks half asleep (she's holding her hand that way due to wanting to show off her new greenish gold nail polish she got the day before. ha). She's holding one of the things she got for St. Patty's Day. And then there's bedhead Bailey. ha Her hair looks wild. She's wearing some beads the girls got as well. Bailey is holding a rubber spider. Yes, she's into insects and things right now.

 

The school had the duck race again this year. The money donated went to the Diabetes Foundation, so it was for a good cause. Caitie is holding her little rubber duck she got for the race. It didn't win, but she loves it anyway. ha

 

 

I took this pic of the girls one day after school. I like how it turned out, so decided to include it in this post.

 

 

  

  

   

  

   

  

  

  

  

Looks can be deceiving

I took a picture of my brother-in-law David a few weeks back. I decided to make it look vintage; I kinda like the look, how 'bout you? He was on a train... let's just say he was moonlightin'. Being a railroad engineer is his second job. Not everyone knows this, so let's keep it between us, okay? Please don't tell anyone.

He's known for being on time everywhere he goes. No matter the weather, and going along at dangerously high speeds, he ends up at each destination exactly on time. Does this story sound familiar to you? If it does, well... that's because it's actually the story of Casey Jones; he's known as the 'on time' railroad engineer, and that's his picture above, and no, I didn't take it. He's no longer with us, he passed on many years ago due to his final train ride ending in tragedy. You can read more about his story here and here. So I guess this is where I put... April Fools! um, yeah...

 

Hey, I try every year, and when I saw how similar Michael's brother looks to Casey Jones, I couldn't resist using that for my April Fools' Day post. I'm running out of ideas, people. Of course, it would probably help if y'all knew what David looked like, of which some of you do, but most probably do not. There is a pic of him below, but that doesn't help with the April Fools part of this post since it comes a little late in the post, and you'll soon see that it's not of the best quality anyway. Maybe I should have given this post a little more thought? Anyhoo...

 

Here's another picture of Casey Jones... it doesn't look as similar to David as the above picture does, but it does still resemble him a bit. Michael kinda looks like him too. I wonder if they're related in some way... hmmm... Geneology, here I come... or not.

Here's a picture I took last year on David's birthday. Michael, his brother David, their dad (my father-in-law), David's friend, and Caitie and I went over to Michael and David's uncle's house (their dad's brother) in our (more like michael's due to it being his pet project) Cadillac (bailey stayed with her grandma at her uncle's house). I decided to take a quick pic of the group. It's lousy quality due to  my not using flash, so I decided to use sepia and make it look a bit vintage with the hopes it would look a little better and add to the vintage style of this post. David is the one in the middle. The resemblance to Casey Jones is more when David was younger and a bit thinner. (do ya like all my parenthesis in this paragraph? and here's yet another one for ya. um, yeah...)