Easter 2010 Recap!

Happy Easter!

This year's Easter was busy, busy, busy!  This year we split our time between Michael's mom and my parents.  We'd visited with Michael's dad and grandparents the weekend before, so that made things a little easier.  We had initially thought we would only visit with Michael's mom since we saw my parents last year, but my grandmother and my Canadian relatives decided to visit with my folks, so that made it a tough call.  It certainly didn't help that I was also performing at the Easter service for church and had lots of rehearsals.  If only we could get another couple of days to recover from all the action!

Anyhoo, we spent a lovely, laid back, low-key Saturday morning with Gigi and a lovely, laid back, low-key Sunday afternoon at my parents after spending an action packed morning at church!  I won't bore you with all the details but we certainly enjoyed ourselves on both counts.

Michael, Gigi, and Billa hanging out on the hammock

Dying eggs at Gigi's!

Our eggs from Gigi's...my favorites are the purple one in the front and the blue one with the red orange scribbles that Billa made.

Billa hunts for eggs at Boppa and Papa's house with Daddy.

"Look at my eggs!"

 

I wonder what's inside?

 

The eggs we dyed at Boppa's house.  My favorite is the tricolored purple, orange and red one in the back.  Apparently my family thinks I should be a professional egg dyer now...ha!

Family members:  If you want to see more pictures from this Easter. you can click here for the Slideshow!

Happy Easter,
Kelly

Easter Weekend Recap

Where to start...well, how about Friday?

I took Friday off because I desperately needed a day off (working from home while sick with a cold/bronchitis does not count!) and because daycare was closed.  I left work a little early on Thursday so that I could go and watch Billa hunt for candy with her classmates at daycare.  They opted not to stuff the candy in eggs and instead threw it all over the lawn and the kids had a blast hunting for it.  Daycare Lady had made paper bunny ears for each of them and the kids were so stinking cute running around with their buckets and these paper ears!

Billa and her friend Justin pick up some candy.

The kids played with some soccer balls after the candy hunt; the weather on Thursday afternoon was PERFECT!

We're definitely a football family, as opposed to a soccer family!  Billa kept carrying the ball instead of kicking it and would jump on top of it as pictured above.

Good Friday was better than good; it was great!  The Marino family had done some garden boxes the previous year and wanted us to help them again this year.  They are letting us use some of their backyard space to plant our own stuff (although most of it will be identical to what the Marino's are planting) and so we spent all day digging in the dirt, putting together garden boxes, taking a trip to Lowe's and spending some good ol' fashioned quality time with our families.

Taking a snack break

Daddy shows off his gardening handy work

We didn't get a chance to do much planting on Friday since building the boxes took all day, so Billa and I went back over on Saturday to finish up (Daddy had to work, boo).  We also went to the Easter egg hunt at the capitol building, which was ok.  There was no hunt involved at all!  They just spread eggs all over a 20'x20' space and then let the kids swarm all over them, picking them up.  The candy wasn't even that great either.  Billa hunted in the 0-3 age group and I was shocked to find bubble gum in some of the eggs she picked up!  Looks like someone mixed up some of the eggs for the older kids!

Billa eating her cupcake that she decorated.  For some reason, she decided that it was better to eat out of Mommy's hand like she was a bird.

Before the hunt started

After the hunt started (which lasted all of 30 seconds)

There was also a cupcake decorating station, a fishing booth, face painting and some other activities for the kids, but we didn't really participate in much because Baby Hayden was not happy about his nap schedule being thrown off.  All the kids passed out in the car on the way home, so we took the time to drive to Natural Gardener and pick up the rest of our planting.  By the way, if you've never been to Natural Gardener, you need to go.  It is one of the coolest nurseries I have ever been to!  The kids woke up when we got there, so we got our plants and headed back home.

We finished up our planting and then Sybilla and I raced home about 5:45 to meet up with Michael so that we could go have dinner with his mom.  We had a lovely evening with Gigi and Papa Carl and Riley the Beagle.  Gigi had given Billa all sorts of fun goodies in her basket, including a light up wand that looked like an Easter lightsaber, which is Billa's. favorite. toy. EVER.  Seriously, all the way home she kept flicking it on and off and waving it everywhere.  Fortunately, she did not take it to bed.

Sunday, we went to brunch at my parent's house and enjoyed homemade waffles and bacon.  Afterward, we watched the Princess and the Frog before doing an Easter egg hunt in the yard.  Billa had a blast hunting for eggs and running around the yard. We got a couple of bluebonnet pictures which are out en masse this year thanks to some much needed rain we got in the fall. By the time we took off at 3, Billa was wiped out. She promptly passed out in the car and slept the whole way home. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Boppa, Papa, Uncle Phil, and Paul (an ald family friend that comes to just about every holiday with my family).

Homemade sour cream waffles...yum!

Billa shares some waffles with Boppa

It's egg huntin' time!

Even Achilles got in on the action

My favorite egg picture

Mommy and Billa whiling away the hour by conferring with the flowers

All said and done, we had a great weekend and I am feeling so happy right now.  I was so delighted to spend so much time with family doing simple things like gardening and visiting.  I have to admit, I didn't even think about baking, blogging, or anything because I was so exhausted each day.  Exhausted, but happy.  It's definitely springtime!

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!

Love,
the Guerra Family

Happy Easter!

We hope you all have a wonderful Easter today!

Love,

The Guerra's

Easter Pix and 100th Post!

Wow! It's our one hundredth post! Hard to believe I started this little venture a little over a year ago. Yeah, I forgot the blog's birthday. Oh well, 100th post is way cooler I think. So to celebrate our 100th posting, I'm going to finally post some of the Easter pix I got from my parents. The pictures below are some of our favorites. And in case you're wondering, the black corners are where the shutter on my mom's camera were sticking. I think a certain someone with sticky waffle fingers was playing with something she shouldn't have...

Billa shows off her Thriller dance

One happy (and very tired) family with their spoils

Michael finds an egg in the pyrocanthus...watch those thorns Daddy!

An extra inch or two from the gene pool would have been really nice right about now!

Wait, the treat is INSIDE the egg!? Well, that explains a lot!

Billa reaches for an egg

So there you go! I'll post the complete album through Picasa which you can access to the right in the sidebar. Happy one hundred, Pencil of War!

Adios amigos,
Kelly & the Gang

Need a weekend from the weekend!

Well, I was going to post pictures of Billa's first egg hunt, egg-cept (tee hee!) Mommy and Daddy forgot their camera when they raced off to Mass at 8 am on Sunday morning. It's really not that early I know, but I was up late finishing the wedding cake. So I don't have pictures of Easter, but my mom does. And Lord only knows when I'll get THOSE... no pressure Mom & Dad, but can I please have pictures now?!

Billa didn't have daycare on Friday so I took the day off (needed to bake anyway!) and we went an visited Aunt Debi that morning at Starbuck's. We can't wait for another coffee date! We visited for a couple of hours and Debi is trying to convince me to go get my master's. I just ain't ready for that kind of commitment right now. I have enough student loan debt as it is...We came home and Michael entertained Little Bit while I baked coconut lime cake for the wedding and made marshmallow fondant.

Saturday I made swiss buttercream icing and more fondant, iced and covered the cakes and then started on the designs. I got most of it finished by the time Michael's mom came over to babysit Sybilla. It was really her only time to see munchkin over Easter and it gave her some fun time while Michael and I took our time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner, which was uber fun. Mike and Trisa had the party (there really wasn't a rehearsal) on a boat on Ladybird Lake and we got to see the bats and eat Ruby's BBQ. After that we came home, watched the Untouchables and finished the cake, and then went to bed at almost 2. I woke up not long after and threw up, thanks to too much wine, too little water, too much sugar, and not enough sleep. Go figure!

Ta-da! The Talavera inspired wedding cake...yes, I made this with my own two hands! The bride adores Talavera pottery and given that the wedding was at Fonda San Miguel, it was a perfect match.

On a funny side note, I had a pretty crazy dream that my brother had come over to watch the baby while we were at the party and somehow accidentally ruined the cakes. In order to make up for it, he tried to re-bake them and ice them, but he did it all wrong and by the time we got home, there was no time to fix any of it. Talk about meltdown in a dream. I woke up and was in tears until I realized it was just a dream. Phew!

Mass was nice, but the homily was so textbook that I think everyone seated around us was grateful for the entertainment Billa provided. She did pretty well with Mass and I ran into an old coworker from KW there! We went to my folks' house for breakfast and an egg hunt and Billa had a great time. She really got the hang of egg hunting and would say 'egg' every time she found one, which she also got pretty good at. Afterwards, her favorite thing was to pull all of the eggs out of the basket and put them back in, then repeat ten more times. Now if she could just do that with her toys...

Easter evening was the wedding and what a lovely wedding it was! The food was fantastic, the company wonderful, and the ceremony was definitely memorable, if not embarrassing for Michael and I! Billa decided after 5 minutes she was done and refused to sit still. She was running up the aisle and grabbing her Zeti & Tata's legs and chasing after Daddy when he went to go sing and read. Everyone said it wasn't a big deal, but it really bugged me... it's a wedding for crissakes! My cake got rave reviews and looked beautiful to boot. I definitely learned a lot from this experience which was good and I also had several of Trisa's friends tell me they'd be calling! Yay!

Billa and her cousin Jake who adores Billa. This is the same child who told me "Happy Marry Day!" at our wedding. Jakey has always had a special place in my heart!

Needless to say, it was an exhausting weekend and I definitely need a weekend from our weekend!

I know, I know, it's a terrible picture, but until we get to see the photographer's photos, this is all I got! There wasn't anything else with me in it and very few with Billa looking happy. She got totally overwhelmed by all of her adoring fans that she spent the first part of the evening attached at the hip and in tears. [sigh]

Until then,
Kelly & the Gang