More Easter fun...

It is always lovely to end the Easter Weekend with brunch and a hunt at Ba's and Opa's.  

The Easter bunny always hides some interesting surprises for the girls, like fruit. 

The girls in their Easter bonnets...

The Easter we Learned about Pie-Face and Googly Eye Games

Mommy took Good Friday off and had a lovely time taking the kids to the Monmouth Museum, where Evie decided to take off to the moon, and later the girls tried out their garden faces. 

Then what followed was another delightful weekend in New Jersey where we celebrated Easter with all the cousins. 

Cute sister pix...

After the egg hunt Ellie models her bunny ears. 

We celebrated Molly's birthdays with big smiles!

After cake, we were introduced to a new game called Pie Face - nothing like a little whipped cream in the face to get the party started. 

Unless it's a cutthroat game of Googly Eyes! 

Happy Pre-Easter Hunt

It was a slightly chilly, though thankfully generally dry Sunday, for our annual Easter Egg dying and hunt celebration. Behind Ellie and Evie is our table of delectable treats, including the world-famous rice-krispie eggs and watermelon bunny.

Evie and her friend Ella take some time to enjoy at least one of those rice-krispie eggs (maybe the first of three she enjoyed that afternoon?).

Meanwhile, Ellie was an egg-decorating pro. She was particularly fond of creating stripes with rubber bands wrapped around the egg.

Evie wore her kitchen apron to keep the dye off her clothes.

Birthday girl London and Benjamin were carefully and excitedly creating little chickies in "egg shells" (which are cut up egg cartons).

Ellie and Evie finishing up the last of their eggs. They choose lots of bright colors rather than the brown and gray McDonald traditional camouflage colors.

Gina helped the kids including Abigail make some beautiful marblelized dyed paper eggs with deluxe Barbasol foamy shaving cream.

Ellie and her good friend London -- love the headband (inspired by Richie Tenenbaum).

The whole gang ready to be let loose to find the eggs! Good luck everyone! May the odds be ever in your favor (although everyone is a winner in our hunt). 

Ellie spots a an egg...just out of reach...stretch a little more...

Lucy, Ellie and Sofia -- Ellie's MHCP buddies!

Evie is on the hunt!

Ellie finishes up with an egg-celent booty!

Leena finds the golden egg with a shake of the bush!!  Another great egg hunt!

March Madness

It has been a whirlwind month, starting with the big night of our Oscar party! 

As you can see, the girls really learned how to strut their stuff on the red carpet.  

Then, time to celebrate Opa's brithday with the traditional ice cream cake and handmade cards. 

https://youtu.be/UkKxxA6Ggm8

Last Saturday, the girls put on their brave faces and tried rollerskating... it was an interesting experience, but what saved the night was really the snow-cones at the end.  In the picture above, Ellie is answering Mom's question on how much she liked rollerskating: "Only this much!  Which isn't much at all!" 

The next weekend we checked out the Air & Space Museum during their National Kite Festival. The girls enjoyed making crafts and kites and an anemometer, before watching artistic kite flying demonstrations in the main lobby.  

Our first Chinese New Year trying Chopsticks

Chinese New Year is always a lot of fun, and this year was no different! The girls donned their ao dai and the family headed over for dim sum where Evie modeled her chopstick skills for the rest of the tame. Long noodles, long life!

Then it was back to Ba and Opa's house to celebrate! 

The girls were delighted to see what surprises were within their lucky red envelopes! 

The week before, we checked out the festivities at the Sackler Gallery where Evie was a ribbon twirling master!

Mom, Dad and Ellie had fun coloring our monkey masks. 

We have a howlin' great time at Great Wolf Lodge

The girls were so excited to hit the road for an adventure - our first trip to Great Wolf Lodge!  While we wait to collect our wolf ears, the girls explore the lodge lobby with Dad, including the huge fireplace...

...and the scary bear!  Augh! After checking into our room, we headed straight for the indoor water park and enjoyed splashing around in the wave pool, the many water slides, and the lazy river.  The girls were very brave and tried almost all of the water slides, including the fast slides that spun us down a dark tube!

After a couple of hours at the park, we decided to check out the other areas of the lodge, and everyone had a blast playing candlepin bowling.  Ellie liked to chuck her bowling ball, though, we thought she was going to break something.

Evie found the cub ears to be her good luck charm, landing a couple of spares.  However, Mommy won the championship, to Dad's chagrin.

Next stop: the arcade, where Ellie is doing an impersonation of a crazy bus driver.  Mom thinks she lost some of her hearing being in the arcade noise for so long!

That night, while Mom and Dad watched the superbowl, the girls loaded up on their own snacks and snuggled up in their own cave - which had their own TV. The girls were in heaven.  Overall it was a fantastic trip! 

Bookworms rejoice at the Library of Congress

We had a lovely visit with Grandma Bebe over the long holiday weekend and we got to visit the Library of Congress for the first time! 

Ellie became a photographer and captured some great scenes from the beautiful atrium with the iPhone. Meanwhile, Evie liked scanning the books in Jefferson's Library and peaking into the beautiful reading room. 

We also liked studying the old maps of the country, including one of New Jersey around the Revolutionary War.  It was a lovely visit followed by a delicious dinner and of course, Bebe's french toast.