Easter Weekend - Part 2

After we left CiCi & PopPop's on Saturday, we went to MawMaw & Granddaddy's house and decorated Easter eggs.

Addy painted a few eggs.

And then she made Mawmaw go get the blow dryer so she could dry her eggs. Genius, I swear!

Alex started painting his eggs with a little bitty paint roller.

But then he decided finger painting is much more fun!

Dirty dirty hands = lots and lots of fun!

And of course, we dyed some eggs too!

Look how pretty they turned out!

When we were all done decorating the eggs, Addy picked these 5 for an egg hunt.

She hid them herself

and then went and found them! (Amazingly, she didn't even have to look to know there was an egg in this birdhouse, lol!)

And of course, Alex had to get in on the action & found a few himself.

(Addy wasn't too happy that he was hunting her eggs!)

On Sunday, Mawmaw & Granddaddy hid the rest of the eggs in the backyard for a big Easter egg hunt with Jules & Grant. Stay tuned for my Easter Weekend - Part 3 post to see more about that.

Easter Weekend - Part 1

On Saturday we celebrated Easter at CiCi & PopPop's house (or their farm as Addy's been calling it!)

Kelci & Chloe were there.

And so were Jared, Boone,

Brooke & Charlie.

Molly was not feeling well so her sweet little family did not make it. They were surely missed by all.

It was really a beautiful day, so we spent a lot of time playing outside. We played Hide & Go Seek & Tag & then the kids got to do something really cool.... PICK CARROTS!!!

CiCi & PopPop have a small garden in their backyard and the carrots were ready to be picked. So CiCi brought Alex out & let him pick some.

He thought it was really cool!

So cool that he went inside & got PopPop & Addy to come out & pick some more.

Then Addy ran inside & got a stuffed bunny rabbit. Because what do you do with carrots? You feed them to bunnies of course!

I asked Alex if he wanted to feed Addy's bunny a carrot & he said "No, I'm going to feed the real bunny." And then he ran over to this bunny statue & fed it. (So apparently, this bunny is REAL!)

And of course Addy had to feed this bunny too.

And then they both fed this one. (And Alex said this one is not a buuny, it's a rabbit.)

And after carrot picking (or pulling I should say) CiCi & Addy tried to catch a few of these little guys. Sadly, they weren't able to. (I'm sure the lizards weren't too sad about it though, lol.)

We all had such fun playing at CiCi & PopPop's! Addy has been telling me everyday since then that she wants to go to CiCi & PopPop's farm! Hopefully we'll make it back there soon.

P.S. Nick & I were both there too. I guess I should post a picture of us. Sadly, this is the better of the 2 that mom took.

P.S.S. Forgive my stringy looking hair, I had been playing outside for a couple of hours with the kids.

Autism Awareness

Monday, April 2nd was World Autism Awareness Day and the whole month of April is Autism Awareness Month!

To help raise awareness for autism, the fastest growing developmental disabitlity in the US, Autism Speaks started the Light It Up Blue campaign. This year was the 3rd year for Light It Up Blue and each year it has gotten bigger & better.

Click here and take a look at all the public buildings around the world that participated in Light It Up Blue 2012!

Here's how our little family did our part to help raise awareness for autism...

I ordered a Light It Up Blue 2012 shirt for Addy & myself & we wore them on Monday.

Showing the front & the back of the shirt

The Light It Up Blue 2012 shirt wasn't sold in Alex's size, but he still showed support for his sister by wearing a solid blue shirt. (He's hiding his shirt because he didn't want me to take a picture of it, lol.)

And Nick had to go to work on Monday, so he wore a navy blue suit with a blue shirt & blue tie & his blue Autism Speaks lapel pin.

I also ordered us all Autism Speaks bracelets

& I painted my fingernails & toenails blue!

And throughout the whole month of April, I plan on keeping my fingernails & toenails blue & I plan on wearing all my autism awareness shirts as much as possible!

Not only did we wear blue for World Autism Awareness Day, but I also decorated our house. We are going to Light It Up Blue for the whole month of April.

I painted this sign & put it in my front yard.

And this one too.

I made this door hanger for my front door.

(I also made one for both sets of Addy's grandparents & 2 more for moms of kids on the spectrum in Addy's class.)

And I ordered blue christmas lights from Amazon & wrapped the columns on my front porch with them.

And of course my porch light is also blue.

Addy's resource teacher had talked to me about doing something on World Autism Awareness Day at the school. I sent her a GREAT list of ideas but sadly, about 99.99% of it we couldn't do! (The school was already set to celebrate Child Abuse Prevention Awareness on Friday, March 30th. The color for that is also blue & all the children in the school wore blue that day. So the principal said he couldn't ask the kids to wear blue again on the next school day. But all the teachers wore blue at least.)

One of the little boys in Addy's class that also has ASD, well his mom is an officer of the PTO. So she went & talked to the principal & he agreed to let us decorate for Autism Awareness Month in the hall around the front office. So on Monday, we went to the school to decorate, but ran into a little problem... The school had no power! Something was wrong with their main breaker or something like that. And so we couldn't use the poster maker or a hot glue gun or basically anything & everything else that we needed. So we agreed to meet another day to decorate (which we haven't gotten a chance to do because things just keep coming up! But hopefully we'll be able to do it Monday.)

The plan is to make an informative bulletin board in the hallway & to put puzzle piece diecuts in the windows & doors when you first walk in the school.

I typed these up & we're going to blow them up into posters on the school's poster maker and put them on the bulletin board.

I also made these for the 3 resource teachers, the PPCD teacher (Addy's teacher last year) and the speech therapist to hang outside their classroom doors.

And as soon as we finally finish getting the school decorated (hopefully we can get around to it while it's still April, lol) I will post some pictures & show ya'll what we did.

When April rolls around next year though, we're going to be much more prepared.



March Date of the Month

On Saturday, Nick & I went on our monthly date for March. This time we made a day of it & went to the Shell Houston Open Golf Tournament in Humble.

We stopped at Pappasito's for lunch on the way to Humble. (We obviously LOVE Pappasito's because we ate there on our last monthly date too!) Just look at the delicious & super fattening garlic butter sauce! It's too die for (and might actually kill you too!!!)

After lunch, we drove to Humble & spent the afternoon at the

Shell Houston Open.

It rained on Friday, so on Saturday they played in groups of 3 to make up time. Taylor Vaughn is 3rd from the left, Boo Weekley is wearing the brown shirt, and Hunter Mahan (who won the tournament) is in the navy blue pants.

Quiet please!

We sat down at the 7th hole & watched a few groups play through.

Erik Compton hit this ball over the cart path into the rough, right by us!

This was the best picture of Phil Mickelson I could get after getting busted taking pictures with my phone twice. Apparently there is a rule, no pictures on the course!

Around spending the day walking around in the sun, we were hot & tired so we decided to head home. But we stopped in Sugarland at Genghis Grill for dinner first. (You can see that Nick got a little sun, or color as I call it, on his face.)

If you haven't been to Genghis, I suggest you try it. It's basically like Chipolte but with Chinese food. You go through a line & pick your meat, veggies & sauce & if you want rice or noodles & they stir fry it all up for you. It was my first time to go & I really liked it, as you can see from my almost empty bowl! (I probably could have eaten the rest, but Nick said noone ever finishes their bowl when they go eat there for lunch, so I didn't want to be the first one to finish mine, lol!)

And that was our date night day for the month of March. We just barely snuck it in, lol!

Stay tuned to see what we do in April.