Easter 2016

Easter is pretty low key here. We don't do Easter baskets or the Easter bunny. We do egg hunts (and you KNOW I love dying eggs) but not on Easter Sunday. We try to keep Easter about the resurrection. Here is Pippa telling the Easter story:

It's kind of soft and you can hear Roxy crying in the background, but it's mostly understandable and adorable.

We did an Easter egg hunt in the park with a bunch of families from our ward.

Pippa running and in the very tiny background you can see T crouched down with Roxy.

Happy Easter

While you were sleeping...

The girls are always ready to be up for the day before we are. Most days we get out of bed (or at least one of us does) and get breakfast and start the day. On weekends, it's harder. Sometimes we just lie in bed and let the girls do whatever in our bedroom and we're not really sure what that is because both of us have eyes closed.

One such morning, my phone was on the floor next to the bed. I found this photo series later in the day. Apparently Pippa got my phone and took a bunch of photos of Roxy taking a pen to a book. Yikes!

 

Leap Day - Because Real Life is for March!

It was Leap Day! So, of course we celebrated. What do you mean you don't celebrate Leap Day?!  It's our family's thing! Well, we decided to make it a tradition based on the Leap Day episode of "30 Rock." Here's an explanation of Leap Day:




Here's a (fake) Leap Day movie that plays throughout the episode:


We take the "Real life is for March" sentiment seriously, so on Leap Day we've decided that T will take the day off from work, the girls won't go to school and we will just do fun stuff all day!

T was telling Pippa about Leap Day and the fun things we were going to do. Pippa replied, "Yeah! And on Leap Day we watch movies!"  I love that she thinks watching a movie is one of the funnest things you could do.

For our Leap Day adventures I tried to dress the girls in the traditional Leap Day colors of yellow and blue but they weren't having it. I wanted to take the girls to Happy Hollow (a little kid amusement park) but they are closed on Mondays. So are all the other places that have kiddie rides. We did have success in teaching Pippa to fake cry for candy!

We started by going out to Black Bear Diner for breakfast (we literally never eat breakfast out and very rarely other meals). Then we went to the Oakland Zoo. And it was absolutely not crowded because it was a weekday. For your viewing pleasure:

 Pippa really enjoyed the lily pads.

If you go, skip the train ride. Super lame.

On the ride home all of us (well, not T as he was driving) fell asleep.

Then we cried for candy and watched a movie. A good first Leap Day for the girls.

Valentine's Day

It's kind of our thing to send out Valentine's cards instead of Christmas cards. Here is this year's edition:


Front:

 Back:

Well, it was a cropped version of this photo with the following text:

T loves commuting on BART (not), dessert, and sleeping in.
S loves sleeping, Pinterest, reading, and eating food prepared by anyone else.
Pippa loves climbing, building with Legos, singing, and telling us what to do.
Roxy loves sucking on her binky / fingers / Mom's fingers, dancing, and following Pippa.
And of course we all love you!

We messed up on the ordering and only had enough for siblings, aunts / uncles, grandparents, and like five friends. Sorry if you didn't get one this year!

We also made Valentine's sugar cookies. It's a family tradition starting with my grandmother who made them while her kids were growing up then when the kids went to college she mailed the V-day cookies to them. My mom and some of her sisters have done the same. And now I (we) do it, too. It's the only time I'll make sugar cookies, I'm not a huge fan.

Roxy carefully placing M&Ms on her cookie.

Pippa was a lot more generous with her M&M's, but still just as careful in placement.