Easter Revisited

Eamon was very into coloring Easter eggs this year and only cracked one which is a record for us!

Liam picked out glitter eggs (not surprising!) for our decorating scheme. This is by far the best their eggs have ever turned out. They all did a great job!

And the Easter Bunny rewarded them with treats galore!
They were amazed that he knew they'd just seen Monsters vs. Aliens the day before. Who knew the Easter Bunny was a movie buff?

It was very, very, very cold out for the Easter egg hunt. Poor little Liam was shivering!

It didn't stop him from finding some loot though!

Eamon had a ball and collected all of his "E" eggs with very little help from his brothers.

And, of course, Colin was a pro this year and eeked out all the hard-to-find eggs.

Some delectable Easter treats. No holiday would be complete without colored frosting in our house!

The best I could manage of the three boys together. They were much more interested in going to Grammy and Grampy's to see their cousins for the rest of the day!

Playing catch-up

I am hopelessly behind, not only here on the blog, but in our life in general right now. We've had a LOT going on here in the past month or two and I'll try my best to get the world at large caught up on our little slice of crazy.

We built a leprechaun trap for St. Patrick's Day and we ALMOST caught that tricky little guy. His vest got caught in the trap door on top, but alas, he escaped. Next year we'll get him!

We spent the day at the St. Paddy's Day parade with Meghan, Matt and Erica and had a grand time. What day would be complete without a wrestling match though?

Christopher and Liam loved the Shriners the best. All those crazy little cars and motorcycles.

Little Irish Boy in a tree looking oh so handsome decked out in green.

In slow moments of the parade, you could always find the boys up a tree!

Little leprechaun collecting hats.

Cool stolen shades, dude.

Colin had a great time and was extremely well behaved the whole day!

Big thanks to Meghan and Matt for inviting us and for the fabulous homemade pizza afterwards. I'm no fan of corned beef or cabbage so pizza was perfect!

The week in review

Emergency vet visit for Clara's mystery ailment: $65
New septic pump (which fortunately didn't flood): $650
Broken gas line on car (which fortunately didn't blow up): As yet to be determined lump sum
Eamon smearing butter all over Clara and dousing her with cinnamon sugar: priceless.

All in all, a typical week in Casa Chaos.

Frogs and Monsters

We spent another fun day at the Museum of Science. It's one of our favorite places to wander when we have the urge to get out of town and head for the city for a while. There were two new exhibits this month: Frogs and Mythical Creatures. Both are high on the list of the boys' favorite things. We saw amphibians of every shape and size, cute ones, spiky ones, sticky ones, bullfrogs as big as dinner plates that ate live mice and birds. We saw Bigfoot and Unicorns, Japanese sea monsters and Chinese dragons, Griffins and mermaids. As Liam closes in on his fourth birthday, he has his own moments of being a monster lately. You can see the daily fluctuations in his photos. Happy-go-lucky morphs quickly into Pouty-go-Growly. I guess we'll have to keep him though, in case he morphs back into his usual self oneday soon!

Trouble and his brothers, Whine and Pout.

Can you match the boys with their appropriate moniker? Here's a small snapshot of what they've been up to. Unfortunately, Pout was too pouty to make it into any pictures this week. Just envision his lower lip out in your heads...

Eamon can not only dress himself now, he can also UNDRESS himself. And does so every day, especially at nap time. We have to duct tape his diaper on so he doesn't shower his bedroom with his little hose.

Eamon is also the master of the safety scissors and loves to cut, cut, cut all day long. He also is enamored with buttons, glue and paper scraps.

Liam's "rolling boat".

I believe this is me. Colin made shape pictures of both Christopher and I for us to bring to work so we "don't miss each other". Cute.

Thanks to a table from Auntie Kelly, the boys could set up the iMacs Daddy got for them. Have you ever seen boys (big and little) look more excited? I'm not sure who was happier, Daddy or the boys!

Trouble, getting his name by stealing my "everlasting" lipstick and trying to impersonate the Joker.

Colin doing his Harry Potter impersonation with my glasses. Fitting for our studious little guy!

Gimme love, love, love, crafty love.

Valentine's Day has grown to be a well-loved holiday around here. Though, really any excuse to make crafts and treats is always well-received by the boys. Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to in the Love Month so far.

1. On a particularly spring-like day this week (temps in the 40s felt like summer to us!) the boys painted the town (okay the yard) red (okay, pink) with some spray bottles of food-coloring-tinted-water. I helped Colin make a heart.
2. Thanks to Clara, we USUALLY tell the boys to stay away from yellow snow but this time it was A-OK. Here is one of Liam's snow masterpieces.
3. The big boys LOVE their teachers and after this gift, who wouldn't love them back?
4. Colin perfected making hearts and I found them on scraps of paper all over the house.
5. Bestill my heart with treats.
6. Nothing says love like a mini chocolate chip cheesecake!
7. Liam loves marshmallows and Colin loves conversation hearts. I compromised by mixing the two together for the rice krispy treats for their school party.
8. Colin is obsessed with making books at the moment. Our stapler is thankfully out of staples but he uses copious amounts of scotch tape to bind a bunch of printer paper and spends hours on his literary art. This is his valentine gift for Chris and I: "The I Love You Book, by Colin". So sweet.
9. Two of the many pages of the books depicting Mom and Dad. He's also written two editions of "Colin's spy book" which details all of the things one must do to be an effective spy, including "Being quiet and tip-toeing".
10. Here is a sample of the butterfly valentines the big boys painstakingly made for their classmates. This is one that Liam slaved over for three days, perfecting every last inch with glitter, glue and buttons.
11. Colin concentrating diligently on making a necklace for his cousin David out of buttons. They are REALLY into crafting at the moment (I wonder where they get that from??) and many hours a day are spent in the throes of pen, paper, scissors and glue. Colin commented this week that he particularly likes the smell of Sharpie markers and hot glue. I was hoping to hold off on the big drug talk until at least kindergarten but I might have to have a chat about "huffing" sooner than I thought...
12. Two inchworm valentines inching along to tell the cousins how much our boys adore them.

Fun with snow

While Christopher and I are rather sick of the snow (something happens after age 30 that just makes it annoying... could be all the shovelling and the 45 minutes it takes to de-ice our cars every morning). But the boys still LOVE the snow. They've been sledding every weekend and I haven't managed to get any videos of it, but today they made a mini snowman with their cousins and I figured it was time I documented some of their fun!