Christ Is Risen!

All dressed up for church. Samantha didn't want to pose.

I love this one!

They finally realized I wasn't going to give up until I got a "good one"!!

Counting.

....and more counting.

Samantha's favorites: her very own bubbles and the puppy.

Happy to have one of the four of us..and Grandpa in the background!

Grammie & Grandpa, too, and even Beau posed for the picture.

It's hard to tell from the cute pictures of the girls dressed up and hunting Easter eggs, but we spent a lot of time this Easter talking about the reason it's such a wonderful day! Jeff wasn't feeling well this weekend but the girls' and I went to the Good Friday service where Danielle paid very close attention to the songs and verses about Jesus' death on the cross. She also took Communion for the 2nd time (her first time was a few weeks ago...a very special day for our family). I reminded her that the Easter Sunday service would be the time for celebration but Friday evening was the time for a little sadness and lots of thankfulness for what Jesus did for all of us.

Easter morning was a special time! The girls were thrilled to have Grammie join us for church, we sang many joyful songs, visited with friends and celebrated that Jesus is alive! Before church we had a lot of fun watching the girls open Easter baskets, hunt for eggs, and even eat jelly beans before breakfast. Danielle seemed most thrilled about the pink nail polish in her basket and Samantha was overjoyed to see a tiny puppy in hers.

We had a wonderful Easter dinner with Grammie, Grandpa, and Uncle Tim, hunted for more eggs, and got more surprises in Easter baskets. It was very hard to get good pictures for some reason but at least some memories were captured. I'm curious if anyone with a 4 year old and a 2 year old can ever manage a great photo. I think one of these days I'll have to get professional pictures done.

Samantha's turn.

My last post was all about Danielle so this post can be all about Samantha.

Lately she is talking up a storm which is really fun. She has lots of questions and comments about everything. We're at that stage where I wish I had a video camera on her all day long. You just never know when she's going to say something hilarious!

Samantha will tell you her favorite color is blue. She loves puppies and baths but does not like getting her hair fixed. She loves her daddy a lot and always wants him to have a kiss goodbye (in addition to a hug). Of course her favorite letter is "S"....and she calls the letter "t" a cross. Common things she says are, "Watch this Mommy/Daddy!!", "What you said?", "Of course!", "I don't like this eiver (either)", "Remember me born? I cried for you at the hopsital", "I'm not sweetie, I'm a gwirl!". (There were no typos in this paragraph. I was trying to write the words the way she says them!)

Yes, we do have a bit of fussing, too. I'm hopeful this phase will not last long but I don't want to rush her growing up either. Potty training is going pretty well. I'm learning that everything was easier with just one child. Of course I wouldn't trade a minute of the difficulty for our sweet girl but I definitely recognize that most everything is more challenging now that we have more distractions, two kids to spread ourselves between, etc. Of course the huge rewards are seeing the girls enjoy playing with eachother, showing eachother new things, crawling into eachother's beds in the morning, praying outloud before bedtime and hearing them giggle together as they fall asleep.

Mystery of the week

Our family sure does seem to get the "weird" stuff and this week was one of the most mysterious things we've seen. Tuesday evening at dinner I saw a little red mark on Danielle's right cheek. She was drinking out of a water bottle and had the cap near her face so I thought she had made a little mark on her face. I thought nothing of it for the evening. Then the next morning she woke up, it was much darker and her eye looked a little swollen. My nurse friend looked at her and said to watch for it to be a raised, circular mark as it could be ringworm. Well, I looked at pictures online and it really didn't look like any ringworm pictures I could find. So, we went about our Wednesday since it didn't change much in shape, color, etc.

Well, Thursday morning she woke up and it was blistering! I decided it was time to get it looked at and two of our nurse friends agreed. So, Thursday afternoon she was diagnosed with a chemical burn. Now we had a diagnosis but still so confused as to what burned her! I wish I could say that mystery has been solved. We really do not know. The only thing we could come up with as a remote possibility is we were painting nails Tuesday morning and nail polish remover was used. Perhaps she rubbed near her eye and that skin is more sensitive than finger tips, etc.

Thankfully it doesn't hurt or even itch at this point. She's not too fond of everyone staring at her eye but I explained that they are just curious and are wondering if she is ok. We talked about how thankful we are that it's a small mark because some people get very big burns on their body and they hurt very much. We are glad that hers should heal quickly and not leave a permanent scar.

(If you double-click on the picture you can see the burn more clearly.)

Last Week

I remembered to bring out the camera this past week! So, here are a few random pictures of what our week was like.... The girls love to wear dresses to church. Last week I rememebered to get a picture!

Samantha showing her pouty lip! The girls helping mop the floor. They did ok, were entertained and it wore them out!

Danielle can almost make pancakes all by herself!

Samantha getting cuddle time with Daddy.