Easter

He has risen!!!! He has risen indeed!!! In celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, the Apedaile family celebrated Easter this past weekend. 

We stared off with church service on Saturday evening. We attempted some photos of the kids outside our house afterward. It sure is hard to get a group picture with JT looking at the camera and smiling.

Easter morning! The kids waited patiently on the stairs while Mom and Dad got set up with the camera.

The baskets!!! Left to right- youngest to oldest...

JT immediately spotted the new matchbox cars in his basket.

Followed by the giraffe and horse...

We managed to get JT to sit for a group shot. Again struggling with looking at the camera- he had better things to do than pose for me.

Lindsay and the next "Sisters Grimm" book in the series she is reading.

Some new movies for Sarah to watch!

Courtney with her stuffed lamb...

JT's pillow pet- he has been trying to "steal" the one Courtney got for Christmas from Nanny.

After baskets, it was time for the egg hunt. It was indoors as the weather has been quite stormy recently.

Later in the day, we dyed eggs! Yes, we like to do things a bit backward here :) We usually hide plastic eggs and with our schedule and JT going to bed early during the week, we ran out of time to do them before Easter!

JT had a great time dipping and stirring his eggs...

Not only was this JT's first time to dye Easter eggs, it was Doug's first time too!!!

Doug and Sarah

After coloring his eggs, JT placed stickers on his eggs. He worked quite hard to place them in the perfect place.

You can't dye eggs and not get your fingers colored!

Courtney and her blue fingers.

Lindsay sporting green fingers!

JT found another fun thing to do with the egg stickers- put them all over his body!!!

Living Above the Line

Last week, Lindsay was recognized along with a few select other students at her school for "living above the line" Citizenship Award. This is special as only a handful of students in each grade are nominated by their teachers.

Lindsay came home with an award certificate, a personal note for us from her principal, and a orange card that she can use for some special rewards at the school (like free admission to a school dance, a treat from the cafeteria).

We are very proud of Lindsay achieving this award. Great job Lindsay!!!

Eggs

Our community held an Easter Egg hunt this past weekend! We were very excited to take JT out for his 1st official hunt that he could participate in. Last year, he was just starting to walk and he actually slept through the girls egg hunt on Easter morning. The Egg Hunt was open for children up to age 11, so both JT and Courtney participated.

JT was ready to go with his baseball basket!

Lined up with children 3 and younger for his area to hunt eggs!

JT did such a good job hunting! He would spot one and head straight for it, grab it, shake it, and then place it in his basket.

Sometimes, he preferred to hunt without his basket in tow, so Daddy held it for him.

Enjoying a piece of candy after his quest.

Courtney filled her basket up to the rim! She was so kind to share a "prize egg" with a younger child who lost theirs.

After hunting for eggs and eating chocolate, JT was ready to slide!!! This was the first time I heard him say slide. His language is really starting to explode- we love it!

After all of the egg hunts were completed, an egg toss competition was held. The 4 Apedaile ladies all took part while our men watched and took pictures.

It started off easy as pie...

It continued to get more challenging, though there were some pretty tough eggs that didn't so much as crack when they hit the grass!

Eventually the eggs got the best of Courtney and Lindsay. You can see Courtney's face as the egg busted in her hands. I believe they made it to the top 8- great job!

John captured a great egg in flight shot as Sarah and I were farther apart..

Here, Sarah is about to catch another toss.

This all lead up to Sarah and I being about 30-35 feet apart. You can see the egg about 4 feet above my head...

and the result.. landed splat on my hands, busted open, and completely drenching my face!!! Ahh yes, I was the first to get pummeled by an egg on their face!

Our girls are so sweet, they were by my side within seconds and offering me paper towels to help clean up.

For the sake of memories, I didn't completely wipe everything off until I had a few photos. It felt so gross, I must say. It was all over my hair, face, sunglasses, shirt,and arms.

Sorry about the sun glare, but you should be able to see the yolk down my left arm, on my face and I think some shell on my right upper cheek. My partner, Sarah, relieved it wasn't her :)

PS- Blogger is being blogger and not letting me upload any videos. I'll try to do it again tomorrow.

Yard of Wishes

We have had a beautiful week of weather! That meant most afternoons have been spent outside. JT and his friend Finn had a great time with our yard that is full of Dandelions. Though the yard looks quite unsightly, the boys squeals of delight as they blow their flowers easily makes up for our lack of lush green lawn.

We also found a piece of chalk for JT to use (Finn wanted to push the truck in the yard instead)

JT had a great time drawing on the patio. If we told him to draw something, he would proceed to chalk a few lines and then announce what he drew- boat, car, JT,etc.

JT paused for a moment when he heard an airplane fly overhead. I love how he will stop and then place his finger to his ear when he hears something unexpected.

Here is our little wish maker earlier this week. Yes he was shorts-less because his sister changed his diaper and figured he didn't need his bottoms back on :)

Here Finn is making his wish.

JT has great form with his blowing!

Finn also loved carrying around all of the Dandelions whether they were missing their flower of not :)

A video of JT in action with the Dandelions