Happy Easter from the Egghead!

This was the look Julia sported on the way to the waterpark last Saturday. No one could look at her ith a straight face!

Breakfast

Andrew and I took Benjamin on a special outing one morning last week - out to breakfast! He had thoroughly enjoyed his pancake and even some of Daddy's eggs benedict! Andrew and I have to get used to the fact that we can give one of our kids eggs -- it was a little weird!

The Leprechaun

A few of Julia the Leprechaun faces from St. Patrick's Day this year.  She was really into getting dressed in green and playing up the Irish!

One last birthday hurrah

This post has been in the making for almost 2 months now. For Julia and Alex's birthday we had decided that we would take them to an indoor waterpark a little north of Boston. Our first attempt at this adventure took place at the beginning of February. It was a failure. We arrived at the waterpark when they opened to find out that tickets for that day had already been sold out. The kids were unhappy but good sports and we made the most of the day anyway, going to the Boston Children's Museum instead.

The next attempt was a few weeks ago. We were ready to go, had tickets ahead of time, and had everything packed the night before only to wake up at midnight to Julia throwing up... which continued for the next 8 hours. Followed by the rest of us getting sick. We felt awful about it - at one point Julia was sitting on the couch with a bucket on her lap and said to me "but Mom, I really want to go to the waterpark - they have bathrooms there too" - but this one was out of our hands.

Our third attempt was this past Saturday and I can now safely say that it was a success! We all had a great time possibly made a little better because the kids had no idea until they woke up on Saturday morning that we were going (we weren't risking a third disappointment!). We ended up spending almost 7 hours straight in the water. According to Grandma Laurie, Julia was a lot more adventurous than she had been the last time she was there - going down lots of slides by herself and just going off and playing in the water without Andrew or Grandma or I firmly in hand. Andrew and I both got to go down the big slides with Alex (who loves the dark one so you can't see what's happening). And Benjamin had a great time splashing around in the kiddie areas.

Julia goofing off as we were trying to take pictures 

The three kids playing together! 

 Water baby Benj!

Julia under the waterfall

Yup, I think they had fun!

Heard around the house

There have been some amusing going-ons around here, among the funnier:

• At dinner tonight, Andrew and I were talking about Benjamin possibly coming down with a cold. To which Julia said, "Daddy and I have a cold but that stomach bug flew away."

• They have been serving the kids green milk at school this week in honor of St. Patrick's Day. Julia's choice? water. Because as she told me on the way home this afternoon, "I love green but not in my milk."

• Speaking of school, it has apparently been infested this week with leprechauns who create messes after hours and move things around to try to trick the students and teachers. Well, we had our own "sneaky leprechaun" (as she dubbed herself) who decided our house needed a little sprucing up and plastered St. Patrick's Day stickers all over many of the windows and Benjamin's crib.

Cold Turkey

Poor Benjamin has had a rough few weeks. First, he got almost all his 1 year molars at the same time. Then he caught the stomach bug and had it worse than any of us. And finally, Mom and Dad decided that since he already wasn't getting milk because of the bug we might as well use the opportunity to switch his pre-bed bottle to water from milk.

So he has given up his bedtime (and nap time) milk cold turkey. He actually has handled it much better than we expected but he's been pretty miserable for the last few days. He has been in a little better mood yesterday and today and we're glad to see this face again:

(and don't worry a helmet is on the list of soon-to-be-made purchases!)

Snowmen on Parade

For the last few days we've been dealing with a stomach bug. It got Julia, Benjamin and myself; thankfully it skipped Andrew who did a great job taking care of all of us.  But now it looks like everybody is finally on the mend and hopefully we'll all get a decent night's sleep tonight.

One of the things we have been enjoying while being cooped up for a few days has been doing some artwork with Julia and Benjamin (he likes to scribble!). And last week Julia brought home an avalanche of snowman art that she has been working on at school all winter. So I decided to create a little snowman gallery in our kitchen and thought I would share it here.

I'm hoping these are the last snowmen we'll see this year! We're ready for Spring to arrive!