Easter weekend at the beach.

These pictures are in no particular order, other than the order that Blogger seems to keep fighting me with, putting them in this order for me instead of the order the weekend went....so just enjoy our weekend in a scramble story.

Easter weekend is a weekend that I look foward to all year long. Sure I've enjoyed the amazing trips we've been able to take as a family over the years to Disney and Hawaii and Mexico, but something about our annual family beach trip for easter weekend just makes me smile. (dont get me wrong, Id LOVE if our Easter weekend every year took us to Hawaii instead of our wet oregon coast!) But just knowing that our easter trip comes every year wether a big trip does also or not, makes me smile. Its a time where we do everything Easter, everything family, and everything relaxing. A time to put the winter blues aside, recover from the hustle and bustle of Christmas gatherings and just allows us to enjoy our family with no other distractions. Swimming!

Snow Cones!

The easter bunny filled many of the eggs with baby chickies and coins, the boys were thrilled.

Opening baskets easter morning at the hotel.
We're up now, can we go search for our baskets? We're REALLY excited.
Some of our friends were at the beach also for their wedding anniversary, so we met up with them for some fun times. Here is the triplets (often times when Zach isnt wearing his glasses he fits right in with their twin boys Hayden and Evan they look so much alike) and Eli. The octopus was so active at the aquarium this time. Id never seen it swimming around like it was. It was pretty fascinating to see it fluff up and fly across its tank.

I love these little guys and their tricks they do so you'll feed them. Seals? Sea Lions? I dont remember. haha

Catching little fishies.

Jake had serious battles with the kite, it refused to fly...but once he got it up there, he let it fly for the rest of our time on the sand.

coloring easter eggs.

Bunny breads I made...mmmmm mmmmmm!

More Easter Adventures.

Fun times with Grandma Rita and Grandpa Hector.

Grandma hides eggs really well...now where is that yellow one?

Zach just chilling in the living room.

ahhh...Zach's plane was stuck on the SIDE of the house, just balancing there.

The adventures of Neil and the airplane go a little something like this...plane goes in tree, Neil throws round thing on string in tree to knock plane out, round thing gets stuck with airplane in tree, Neil finds a long pole to get both out of tree, plane falls out round thing has new home in tree. Very entertaining. :)

Eli building his plane.

Easter at the coolest Dentist office ever.

Our dentist is not only cool and great with the kids, but also puts on a pretty snazzy egg hung for the kids. Face painting, cookie decorating, pictures with the big B himself, and an egg hunt all in one...what a deal!

Zach went for a tattoo but Eli wanted face painting. This moment was pretty surreal for me. The beautiful teenage girl painting Eli's face...used to be an adorable little tomboy I used to watch on occasion when she was about Eli's age. Her younger brother was one of my full time kids in my daycare, so on occasion when there was no school etc she would get to come along with him and play with us for the day. When I remember her I think of her hanging upside down on the swing set in her cute little overalls, and now look at her! All grown up and painting my little mans face.

Zach Eli and Zachs little buddy Jacob from school.

Check out Eli's "ready" stance before the hunt. Man, he meant serious business.

Family Self Portraits.

These were taken over the Christmas holiday, but I just recently stole the copy from Kristi and Juans blog...so now Im posting them on my blog, months after Christmas. Thats one good looking group!

I cant get over Zach and Julia's sweet little smiles in both of these, with their arms around eachother. Such cute little cousins.

Silly faces!

Lots of laughs.

I was never very good at April Fools jokes, ever. But now that I have kids, Ive gotten more creative. Or maybe its just easier to pull pranks over on children than it is on adults? I don't know which is true, but regardless I enjoy the holiday more now than ever. I sure get a kick out of my funnies, whether anyone else does or not. ha! The day started out with packing up Eli's lunch for school (although I forgot to take pictures). Typically I don't pack all the extra treats in lunches, ie chips, because the boy would eat that first and run out of time and not eat the good for him things. So now he gets those for snacks after school instead and I only pack the good things. But for this particular day, I opened up a bag of chips and emptied the contents into a Ziplock. Then I nicely packed some grapes in the chip bag and taped it back closed with a cute little "April Fools Day" note in there too. (I did put the chips in a Ziplock in his lunch box though for this day, I'm not THAT mean). Once lunch was packed I heard that a friend woke her kids saying it snowed that day, so I played off that and got Eli good. I told him we were going to get tons of snow that day. He was so excited, but looked as if he might cry when I yelled "APRIL FOOLS!!!!!". I'm evil, I'm aware. When he got home from school I asked how lunch was. "You tricky Mommy you!" was his answer. I'm good! ha ha! Then it was dinner time. On the menu: Cupcakes made of meatballs and green mashed potato "frosting", pound cake "fries" with red frosting "catchup", salad (yep, JUST salad), and jello in a cup "lemonade" (which TOTALLY fooled Jake by the way, see I CAN pull jokes off on adults!)Dinner was fun, and a total hit. Zach asked "what's the orange things in the salad?" ...um, carrots, JUST carrots. They were very concerned that I put something normal on the April fools plate! Jello isn't very thirst quenching, and is really hard to get through a straw. mmmm mmmmmmmmm!

Family Day

The boys have been so patient with their busy hectic parents lately, so we rewarded them with a day of games pizza and prizes.

They definitely had good luck on their sides that afternoon. Eli mastered one particular game, hitting the JACKPOT so many times we lost count. The machine just kept spilling tickets upon tickets, attracting much attention from the other people there that day. When all was said and done, the boys had collected over 2,500 tickets to turn in for prizes! Who does that? I think the most we've ever walked away with before was a couple hundred. 2,000 of those tickets were earned by Eli. We joked that we needed to head to Vegas ASAP. After turning in their tickets for some really cool prizes off the back BIG PRIZE wall, we filled our tummies with pizza and then went to have yummy frozen yogurt for desert. The boys were very happy with our family day, reminding us many times that it was the best day ever.

They sure are sweet.

Ive always bragged about how much our boys love to sleep in, loving sleep myself. Its not abnormal for our family to still be sleeping at 10am. But the last month or so Eli has been our early bird. I'm hoping that its just his bodies way of turning on the "school hour" clock or what every you'd like to label it. I sure hope that he starts sleeping in again though, at least when summertime is here. He wakes up at 7am or so lately (I know, can you believe him, for shame), and we all pay for it dearly. Ive tried to convince him to stay quietly in his bed and read, or play his didj while the rest of the family gets some more sleep. He's getting better about it, not going in Zachs room immediately upon awakening...instead gives Zach a few more minutes before bouncing on him and making him cranky. The other morning I woke Eli for school and he sat up very cranky and says "Mommy, this is exactly what I do to you on the weekends and you yell at me...just waking you up all the time when you are tired. This is your warning, you wait until the weekend again!" HA HA! So we had a very stern talk about weekend lazy days vs school mornings. So as I got on the computer today to update my blog, I turned on the camera to download the newest pictures and found this on there. I think this must be one of our recent mornings when Mommy got her turn to stay in bed while Daddy got up with the "early bird" who had a visitor that morning. Eli in bed playing his Didj while little brother cuddles and watches him play. These are the sweet moments I love.