I just can't wait any longer... my brother apparently doesn't understand what the word "pronto" means. You see, I handed my camera off to my sister to document the Easter festivities and also told my brother it was his duty to share any pictures he took. And yet, Jesse still hasn't sent pictures. Jesse, this doesn't get you out of sending them eventually! So, alas I can't wait any longer... I've already gotten two blog posts waiting in the wings of my brain.
Easter was almost canceled for good this year. I love Easter - it truly is my favorite time of year, even more than Christmas! But Mother Nature wasn't in a good mood and let it snow the week of our family's planned egg hunt, dinner, and ding dong bunny creating. Plus it didn't help that the stress level was at an all time high at our house, with pregnancy hormones out of control and our house in utter turmoil with de-junking, painting, and trying to get Ricco's room finished so we can eventually move ALL of Pearl's crap into her room. So we told my family we were canceling Easter plans for now. After a lot of tears, I decided it was actually a good thing. The stress level went down substantially and we - by we I mean Jeff - even finished painting Ricco's room.
In stepped Nick and Kimmy to the rescue. Their upstairs neighbors had moved out so they had an entire house with no furniture in it. It was perfect! Not only did we not have to worry about cramming everyone inside our house, but we got to crash someone else's place and go through with our original plans. It was loads of sugar-induced fun! 
The loot from the Easter bunny. Had Jeff been excited about Tinkerbell jammies, his basket would have been more full.
And the egg hunt begins... Ruby and Pearl must be blind to the obvious because they left about 30 eggs on the lawn and ran straight for the ones that actually took some effort to find. Jeff had told Pearl prior to Grandpa giving the go-ahead that the objective was to get more eggs than Ruby. Guess we'll be working on that next year. 
Grandpa is always there to lend a hand!
The loot... Ruby walked away with all the good candy. Pearl was more into opening the eggs and pulling out the M&Ms than finding the good eggs with the Starbursts. 
Um freaky Nick. Just to clarify for all you reading, no my brother-in-law is not some weird, pervert as his picture might imply.
I shall not go into the conversation that went along with this picture.... you can only imagine I'm sure what Jeff was laughing at.
Butt crack anyone?
Every year we get more and more creative with the ding dong bunnies. In fact, I think we only made two or three original bunnies. We really should do a contest with some sort of trophy for the most creative bunny next year. We had a lacrosse bunny for Kurt, a fish bunny for mom, a devil bunny, and even a Ricco and prego me bunny thanks to Jeff. I personally feel the Ricco and prego me bunny was the best this year, although the lacrosse stick and net my Dad made for Kurtis was quite impressive. 
So who do you think is bigger at 34 weeks? Me or Ricco/prego me bunny?
If you look carefully you can see Pearl and I waiting for the city's egg hunt to start. Since there was about 500 kids and moms crammed around the course (which seriously was the size of our tiny living room), I decided to help you out by posting the one picture of us both waving. 
Then if you look really, really carefully, you'll see a single pink egg about five feet in front of Pearl.
Now all chaos ensues and I'm not sure where my child is at this point, let alone if she has succeeded in grabbing any eggs. You can probably see several kids getting plowed over and another handful crying though. 
And finally, if you look carefully in Pearl's basket you'll see the one, pink egg she nabbed. I was honestly surprised she got that much. 
Thank goodness Pearl was happy that she got the pink egg she had been eyeing the previous 15 minutes. I felt so bad she only got one that I bought her a pack of Skittles for $1 and threw them in there. It made me feel a little better that I had spent $3 at our city's Easter festivities just so Pearl could come home with about 50 cents worth of candy.
Some planning advice for our youth council for next year:
*Post a sign with how much everything costs. That would save you from repeating "egg hunt, bouncy house, and fish pond are two tickets and everything else (uh, one other thing) is one ticket." The massive line forming (see point #2 below) would actually move if parents had any clue how much $$$ to pull out.
*Start the egg hunt right at 10 am when half the city is there, eager kids in tow, and NOT at noon! Luckily we live within walking distance of the park because there were plenty of parents who were not happy they had to drive back home and then come back two hours later. Or at least advertise when things start!
*Yeah, the idea to have two egg hunts might work had you not combined all the kids five and under into one group. Um... look around... every single kid there was under 5! Hence the one egg, or in some unfortunate cases no eggs (yeah, there were several kids who didn't get any eggs).
*Make the course bigger, like in year's past when it covered the entire park! Cramming 200 kids into an area the size of our living room just isn't a good idea.
Remember Josh? Well Pearl is sooooo over him! And has been for quite some time but I keep forgetting to introduce Ben or Benny-boy as Pearl calls him. I'm sure the switch in boyfriends (yes Pearl tells us Benny-boy is her boyfriend) came about because Josh moved to the big kid class months before Pearl did hence the need for a new squeeze. Frankly, I'm happy for the new crush... Josh was sort of whiney and always had snot running down his nose. Ben is much cuter, sweeter, taller, and apparently an Aggie fan! What we weren't so happy about for the first few months of this new love was the kissing. KISSING! You read right! Every day Pearl would happily tell me she kissed Benny-boy - it didn't help that my sister encouraged it because she thought it was either cute or funny to tease Jeff. We had long discussions about how we only kiss family, which Pearl laughed at. So we resorted to threats and long, uncomfortable discussions about whether she was doing drugs, smoking, or having sex! Ok so it was really Jeff who plopped her down on the counter and started into the dreaded discussions every parent must have at some point with their child out of fear that she wouldn't stop kissing Ben. Thank heavens the talks finally sunk in and the kissing has stopped... for now.
So when I dropped Pearl off at school yesterday and noticed Ben had a USU shirt on too, I just knew it was meant to be - despite all efforts by Jeff to quell the relationship. Pearl was so excited that Benny-boy was wearing his Big Blue shirt. She kept telling him to look at her Aggie letter shirt. Those two love birds even happily posed for a quick picture! I don't think Pearl has ever been so happy to see her Benny-boy as she was yesterday and how can Jeff disapprove now? I mean the kid is an Aggie!
Speaking of Aggies, I thought I'd post a couple other pics of the last game we took Pearl to at the Spectrum this season. She was pumped but not in any picture taking mood. Apparently pictures distract from finding Big Blue, singing the Scotsman, eating popcorn, and convincing mom to buy you a Big Blue hat. 
Now we just need the Aggies to win today's NCAA game so we can all enjoy a nice weekend with a happy Dad and hubby. We all filled out brackets - Pearl and Ricco too. It was so funny to listen to Jeff help Pearl with her bracket. I wish I could have audio recorded their conversation! It went something like this:
Jeff: "Pearl, Utah State or Texas A&M?"
Pearl: "Utah State"
Jeff: "Pearl, Temple or Cornell?"
Pearl: "Temple"
And on and on. There seemed to be a pattern to her picks... anything that remotely sounded like Utah State was selected, as was anything that reminded her of the temple. Her pick for Georgetown to make it to the final round was a bit of a mystery though, she just really liked picking them. Too bad they lost and screwed up all of our brackets though!
Oh and a couple other funny things Pearl has done lately, just so I don't forget them, is telling her dad "raking sucks." Our neighbors gave Pearl a little rake to use outside and the first warm day we had Jeff and Pearl headed out to do some yard work. Pearl was super excited to use her new rake but after a few minutes of trying to clean up the leaves decided enough was enough. She marched over to Jeff and told him "raking sucks" then left her rake on the grass and found something else to do. I thought it was hilarious! And we're beginning to wonder if Pearl really believes Ricco is one of the Madagascar penguins or a baby. I guess she told one of the other moms at school that I had a penguin inside of me. Hmmm... I suppose it's better than her making up some wild story about how he got in there. Boy is she going to be surprised in a few weeks!
I've got nothing really... nothing. It must be the hormones raging in my expanding body but I just can't seem to think of anything to blog about lately. I mean, you can only take so many stories of the terrible toddler phase, Jeff's misery now that another great Aggie basketball season has ended gloriously at home with the outright WAC championship (although there is still a light at the end of the tunnel with the upcoming WAC tournament and the NCAA), and me complaining about gaining weight, feeling like my belly has stretched to it's max, never ending constipation and that pukey feeling on your tongue after you eat (I know TMI), feeling sea sick every time this kid moves, and anxiety over having our house still in transition with neither kid's room put together and wondering what happened since Friday to make the house a mess again. But I did splurge and buy some bedding from Pottery Barn for Ricco which will help me finally decide a color to paint the walls in his room (well for Jeff to paint). Oh and Jeff fixed the drawers on a dresser we bought Pearl at a consignment shop (I think it is super cute, Jeff thinks it's ugly) so Pearl actually has most of her clothes in her own room now rather than the dining room!
So alas, rather than bore you with what really goes on here, I thought I'd enlist some help with the "short list" of names Jeff has picked for the boy. At least first names, middle names are yet to be decided upon. As much as we love calling him Ricco, I'm thinking it probably won't be the top pick come May when he gets here. We do love this kid and I can't wait to meet him, but if you took a look around and saw that he has no clothes, no room, no crib put together, and no name yet (but we do have the car seat this time) you might think otherwise. Nothing "sticks" for me with the names. It's not that I hate any of them it's just that none of them are "the one" right now.
The short list:
- Cole
- Miles
- Carnell - yes this is still on the list.... if you know Jeff you might be able to figure out this is a NFL player who goes by the name of Cadillac - which I vetoed but let Carnell slide
- Lincoln
Let's hear what you think! I'd like to promise the winner or winners a prize but let's get serious, I'm lucky to get the laundry done every week!
Pearl always wants me to drive "straight." It doesn't matter where we go, if you ask for her opinion on how to get there, the answer is always straight. And she knows what that means... no fooling that girl. If you decide to turn she freaks out, especially if we're going home. Everyday on our way home from work she tells me she wants to go straight. And everyday I tell her that I want to go the fast way home which means turning onto the freeway. I don't get it. Going straight takes longer and really isn't that scenic anyway. Lately though I've decided it's easier to give in and take the extra 10 minutes of driving to avoid the banshee screams coming from the back seat. The only problem with this is that eventually we do have to turn. It's the same spot every time and every time Pearl knows it's coming. About a block away from the turn she reminds me that we're going straight. Knowing what's ahead when I do in fact turn, I tried a new tactic last week. I told Pearl that I was the driver so I got to decide. OK so I've lectured her about that before (along with respecting your mom or my personal favorite, that the cops will take me to jail or give me a ticket) but this time she had a comeback. She told me she wanted to drive and proceeded to try and unstrap herself. I told her you have to be 16 to drive and when she turns 16 she can go straight if she wants to. Bad idea on my part. Not only did I have to listen to her banshee screams when we turned but also her insistence that she was in fact 16. I told her over and over again that she was only two but she would have none of it. "No Mom! I'm 16. Let me drive!" Just for fun, since she was already mad anyway, I asked her how old she thought I was. I'm five apparently. Oh and Jeff is 25.
And my failed attempt to teach my child something important in this life stuck. The next day at school she told my sister that she was 16. Little does she know how true that is some days.
I just can't wait any longer... my brother apparently doesn't understand what the word "pronto" means. You see, I handed my camera off to my sister to document the Easter festivities and also told my brother it was his duty to share any pictures he took. And yet, Jesse still hasn't sent pictures. Jesse, this doesn't get you out of sending them eventually! So, alas I can't wait any longer... I've already gotten two blog posts waiting in the wings of my brain.
The loot from the Easter bunny. Had Jeff been excited about Tinkerbell jammies, his basket would have been more full.
And the egg hunt begins... Ruby and Pearl must be blind to the obvious because they left about 30 eggs on the lawn and ran straight for the ones that actually took some effort to find. Jeff had told Pearl prior to Grandpa giving the go-ahead that the objective was to get more eggs than Ruby. Guess we'll be working on that next year. 
Grandpa is always there to lend a hand!
The loot... Ruby walked away with all the good candy. Pearl was more into opening the eggs and pulling out the M&Ms than finding the good eggs with the Starbursts. 
Um freaky Nick. Just to clarify for all you reading, no my brother-in-law is not some weird, pervert as his picture might imply.
I shall not go into the conversation that went along with this picture.... you can only imagine I'm sure what Jeff was laughing at.
Butt crack anyone?
Every year we get more and more creative with the ding dong bunnies. In fact, I think we only made two or three original bunnies. We really should do a contest with some sort of trophy for the most creative bunny next year. We had a lacrosse bunny for Kurt, a fish bunny for mom, a devil bunny, and even a Ricco and prego me bunny thanks to Jeff. I personally feel the Ricco and prego me bunny was the best this year, although the lacrosse stick and net my Dad made for Kurtis was quite impressive. 
So who do you think is bigger at 34 weeks? Me or Ricco/prego me bunny?
