Easter 2014

Easter weekend was SUPER busy! That could be why I'm posting this over a week later. My brother-in-law got married on Good Friday and we came home from the wedding Saturday which meant all of our Easter prep and festivities all pretty much took place Saturday afternoon.

When we got home there was a big box for Grant from Auntie Shauna waiting to be opened. That box contained "magic jelly beans" that needed "planting". Egg coloring. I had cooking to do. And I was chomping at the bit to get a look at all the wedding pictures I'd taken. It was a busy afternoon and evening.

The "magic jelly beans" were first in the line up:

Dig...

Plant...

Water.

Grant was very excited to plant the jelly beans. For the rest of the day he'd just randomly stop, gasp, and say "I think something is growing! Let's go see!" When ever we'd ask what he thought would grow he always said flowers.

Egg coloring was after the planting and in between my cooking.

He was so excited about the egg coloring!

The coloring kit came with stickers to make faces on the eggs

Some of the faces he came up with made me laugh so hard!

At some point in the evening, Grant helped me make the macaroni and cheese for Easter lunch. He was so excited that he got to stir all the ingredients together (and test the cheese to make sure it was ok). It can be so much fun to have him in the kitchen with me :)

When Grant woke up Easter morning, he immediately wanted to check if flowers had sprouted from his magic jelly beans.

He was pretty surprised to see that lollipops had grown from the jelly beans!

Now that's a garden I can get excited about :)

Grant was so excited about the lollipops that had grown outside, he completely forgot that he had to check if the Easter Bunny had left him anything. As it turns out, the Easter Bunny (like last year) had hidden two baskets. But the Easter Bunny and I had a talk, and he's going back to one basket next year.

One basket was hidden under the coffee table

And the other was in Daddy's shower!

He was excited about those socks!

The Easter Bunny is really good at picking out books.

We always do Easter lunch at my mother-in-law's house. We always eat too much good food and then talk about how we have no room for all the dessert that was made...then gorge ourselves on all the dessert that was made.

This year Aunt Debbie brought some arts & crafts stuff for Grant and they made fun Easter pictures for everyone. Grant loves when Aunt Debbie comes to visit!

And then, having no idea how full and tired everyone is, Grant insists on everyone playing hockey with him. It usually ends up being just Grant and Gramma. 

And then when someone "scores"...

...it's hockey fight time.

What? Doesn't everyone's family holiday end with a hockey fight?

High Five for Friday

Today I'm linking up with Lauren and Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past week.

1) On Friday, my brother-in-law & new sister-in-law got married! It was such a fun & busy day. They asked me to be their photographer so I had a lot of fun with that. Plus, Husband and Grant were in the wedding (Grant's first!) so they looked super handsome. Grant was so excited to be going to the farm again and he had so much fun playing with my sister-in-law's nephew. It was a great couple of days!

Me pretending to be a photographer for a day :)

Newlyweds! Congrats to Sparky & Natasha!

All handsome and what-not :) (PS he loved this outfit!)

Grant gettin' down on the dance floor!

2) The morning after the wedding, Grant and I finally got to take advantage of the hotel pool. One of Grant's favorite parts of a road trip is all the swimming we usually do so I was very glad we were able to make time for it.

3) EASTER! With the wedding that weekend too, all of our Eastery things happened on Saturday. Egg coloring, planting the "magic jelly beans" my sister sent, cooking for Easter lunch...everything. Grant got to open his package from Aunt Shauna too and then see what the Easter bunny brought the next morning!

Opening his basket from Auntie Shauna

Coloring eggs!

4) So random, but I brought home a large box from work and one night this week we made an airplane out of it. Last year I made him a jeep out of a box and he thought it was the best thing ever. Apparently a box airplane is awesome too because he was immediately enthralled with it. Last night "the engine broke" and I found Grant on the floor with his play tools "working on it".

5) Thursday we had to take care of my car title so I got to have a lunch date with Husband! We don't do that often so it's always nice. This time we tried a place we'd never been (Jason's Deli - if you're interested) AND they have free ice cream there! That made it a doubly nice lunch, ice cream being my favorite dessert and all :)

Happy Friday!
Have a great weekend!

Monster Jam - 2014

Spring brings lots of things and in our house one of those things is Monster Jam. We usually start scouring their schedule in December or January to see when its coming to Raleigh so we can make our plans. We took Grant to see his first Monster Jam event when he was about 1 1/2 and since then it's been a yearly thing for us. We got our tickets early in March and the event was the weekend before Easter. All week we were reminding Grant about what we were doing and was so excited. 

So of course, he had to stay home sick the day before with a nasty cough...and of course we had to go to the doctor who put him on breathing treatments and an antibiotic for a sinus/ear infection. And of course he had an allergic reaction to that antibiotic that landed us in the ER Friday night. But thankfully, it wasn't bad and they got him fixed up quick and he seemed to feel great Saturday morning so the decision was made to go to Monster Jam.

Monster trucks used to be #1 in Grant's little heart but over the last two years he's been into other things too. So Monster Jam isn't watched at home like it used to be (though he still loves his truck toys!) which made me surprised at how excited he was to be going. He was so excited he couldn't nap or even sit still while we got ready. I heard him say to Husband at one point "Are you ready to go? If you're not ready to go, we're gonna leave you!" It was making me more excited to take him :)

Madusa, Hooked, Stone Crusher, Crusader, Monster Mutt, and Grave Digger

Raleigh is one of their smaller events, so as always there were only 6 trucks - but some favorites of Grant's and he even knew some of the drivers.

Wheelie Competition:

Crash! Grant was so excited :)

I think Stone Crusher won that part.

Then they had a new competition that I don't remember what it was called and then the racing. Which is not really much of a race...but very exciting if you're 3 1/2.

After the racing they do a break to set up for the Freestyle Competition...which is really what everyone comes to see. In the PNC arena they can't do all the fancy stuff they show on TV but they do manage some pretty impressive jumps.

Too interested in the action for pictures!

Freestyle:

Madusa (I don't like that one)

Monster Mutt - my favorite!

Another crash!

Stone Crusher

Grave Digger is a fan favorite around here, so he goes last always.

And he crashed too!

This year was action packed if you like crashes...and what little boy doesn't? (No one was hurt, so that's good.) This was the first year that Grant sat in his seat. He was too scared the first year and last year he couldn't really see from there, but this year was just right :) We had such a good time watching him get so excited. I'm so glad he felt better so we could go. We have a "someday" idea that we'll take him to one of the big events at a stadium when he gets a little older (if he's still so into it). 

DIY Indoor Sandbox

One night recently, Grant and I had a date night. He gets to pick where we eat on our date nights and that is almost always Cracker Barrel. On our way through the maze of knick-knacks Grant likes to touch things. Things that are not exactly kid-friendly items. One of the employees there heard me asking Grant not to touch the ugly table-top fountain he was seconds away from dipping his fingers into and pointed out something he could play with. I am not a patient person when I'm hungry, but I humored her. It was this tiny sandbox with weird sand that played like wet sand complete with mini sand toys. He played, he thought it was great, and I entertained the idea of adding it to his Easter basket...until I saw it was $15.

This past Friday, Grant was home sick. Even when he's sick, he rarely acts sick so he always wants to go outside. I remembered something I had read on Pinterest that was a little like that mini sandbox thing at Cracker Barrel AND I had all the stuff to make it.

I found this "recipe" from Growing a Jeweled Rose on Pinterest and I had all the stuff on hand. Except a container for it but a quick search of my kitchen brought up my largest Rubbermaid container. I figured it would do until I bought something else.

Sticky Sand

• 5 cups play sand
• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup vegetable oil

That's it. You just put all those ingredients in a container and mix it up until it's all combined. It took a little elbow grease to get the lumps out. At first I was skeptical but it wasn't long until it looked just like the picture I saw and it plays just like wet sand. I got out one of Grant's cups and a spoon for a shovel and he happily played at the table with that for quite a while.

He only made a minimal mess with it but it was really easy to clean up.

Later on after his doctor appointment we went to Target to pick up some prescriptions (one of which he had an allergic reaction to that landed us in the ER Friday night) so I grabbed a bigger bin for the sand too. I ended up making a second batch of the stuff and added some sand toys we had in the garage. He pretty much thought it was the best thing ever. Saturday morning as soon as he woke up, he was asking to play with his sand box. Since I had the stuff on hand (minus the bigger bin) it cost next to nothing. The bin at Target was $6. The play sand you can find at a home improvement store, if you don't already have it, for around $3-$5 per bag. And you can make a ton! I'm so glad I gave this a try instead of getting the little kit we saw.

Saturday morning: Iron Man and his sandbox.

Source: Growing a Jeweled Rose