Spring Has Sprung and Easter

I had such a Norman Rockwell moment to start the week.  It was good, because I needed that moment to sustain me through the reality of the remainder of the week.  Monday evening I was cooking dinner and all three kids were playing nicely together in the backyard.  No fighting or arguing, just talking, exploring, digging, etc.  It was just one of those idyllic moments.  What you think parenthood is like.  They even came in nicely, washed up, and ate a nice dinner.  (Well, they ate it nicely.  The dinner probably landed on the scale at: "mediocre to decent.")  Along came Tuesday evening.  Again, they were playing well outside.  Then Josiah tapped on the window to get my attention.  "Look, Mom, a dead bird!" as he holds up it's lifeless carcass with his bare hands for me to see.  I did make him immediately wash his hands, (Henry, too, since he was in the vicinity of the bird) but he was allowed to go back out and poke at it with a stick.  I'm all for exploring, but sometimes you just need to explore with instruments and tools, not fingers.

Henry had a very tired week.  He fell asleep on the way home from CC (wearing Josiah's jeans, no less, so he looked like he was wearing skinny jeans all day, but he insisted that they fit).

He fell asleep on the way home from the bank one evening.  (We were at a full and complete stop during the taking of this picture.)

He almost didn't make it through our dinner at Sweet Tomatoes on Saturday either.  Fortunately a giant ice cream sundae perked him back up.

Caroline usually never gets dessert at restaurants.  They tend to always have some sort of dairy or wheat product.  She did, however, come up and watch Josiah make his sundae, and noticed the sprinkles on the dessert bar quite quickly.  She immediately wanted a bowl of sprinkles, so that was her dessert.  It did say gluten free, but I'm not totally sure sprinkles are dairy-free.  We're supposed to test her every now and then anyway, so I just look at these times as small tests.

Our little Norman Rockwell Easter that we had planned in our heads was not to be either.  We don't do Easter baskets, but we do get them a block of chocolate in the form of a cross or a fish.  This year the boys got the fish.  They took a single bite out of their respective fish this morning.  Almost immediately, Josiah went nuts.  His body literally cannot handle sugar.  It's like I never learn my lesson with the whole candy/sugar thing with him.  And, of course, there were many moments of sugar throughout the day.  We had an egg hunt in our house.  (He ate a packet of fruit snacks.)  We made our Resurrection rolls.  (He ate two of those which contain marshmallows dipped in cinnamon sugar.)  Needless to say, it's been a bouncing-off-the-walls kind of Easter around here.

The best I got with all three.  Pictures are no easy thing around here!

Henry had a rough start to his Easter morning.  He was all nicely dressed for church in his brand new pair of khaki pants.  He was bouncing a balloon around and, in trying to get it, crawled on our elliptical.  He stood up and had grease stains up and down both pant legs.  Argh!  So, he wore blue jeans to church.  Caroline, herself, had several wardrobe changes throughout the day.

She wanted me to take a picture of her in her dress outside.  She totally did this pose all on her own.

I wanted to take a picture of her inside.  She did not want me to.

I used reverse psychology on her, though, and got this.  :)
  

Caroline had a cute outfit week.  It was hard not to include these pictures, too.