Daffodils and Bubbles

The Daffodil fields are in bloom! This has been a tradition since I discovered this field when we first moved to Canada. I always bring Heidi here for birthday pictures, but we came a little early this year when my friend let me know they were in bloom. Ontario is still under a stay at home order and its been soggy and rainy lately so we haven't been out as much as we'd like to and really haven't seen people in real life except at the store or when the kids play with their neighbor friend. So my friend brought her kids and met us at the daffodil fields for a quick play time. Of course the boys were fascinated by the creek and they couldn't keep themselves from picking a few daffodils (Heidi wanted one of each type).

My friend's daughter brought bubbles which were a huge excitement in addition to the flowers.

Trevor decided it was exciting to throw the few daffodils he picked into the creek and watch them float under the bridge. Too bad because I wanted them, but he enjoyed it.

The kids also ran all over in a nearby park and played on the playground for a bit, but it was still pretty chilly, so we only stayed for about an hour.  We are looking forward to it warming up a bit and for this stupid lockdown to get over!

 

Easter

The kids know the Easter bunny is not real because we want to keep the focus of Easter on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, we still do the fun tradition of Easter baskets and an egg hunt. Like we've done ever since we moved to Canada, we did the egg hunt inside because its just to chilly in the morning to go outside in early spring unless you are all bundled up- and I don't have the energy for that so early in the morning after all the other prep!

We filled quite a few eggs with little animals called Hatchimals for Natalie to find. We've had these things for quite awhile and re-gifted them to Natalie on several occasions, but she is delighted with them every time anyway. I scattered all her eggs on the family room floor and told the other kids to let her get them. She is still at the stage that she has to open an egg as soon as she finds it, so that kept her pretty busy while the other kids were searching for candy eggs.

She did discover a few candy eggs though, and ate the candy as soon as she got the egg open.

I made carrot cupcakes that looked like bunnies for dessert. They didn't turn out quite as imagined, but the kids were pleased.

And I made Easter dresses for the girls, so here they are:

 

Easter Egg

Dying Easter Eggs was a pretty low-key affair for us this year. It was more hands-off for me that in years past because the kids are getting big enough to do a lot of it on their own. Of course I had to hard boil the eggs and I helped the kids get the dye going, but they just took it from their. We did it while Natalie was napping so that we wouldn't have her getting involved, but she was very excited to see the eggs when she woke up.

 

Spring 2021

I haven't done a post in awhile because nothing all that exciting has been happening here. Things in Ontario are still pretty strict because of COVID, so we don't get out to do much. And we're going into another province-wide lockdown for at least a month starting in a day or two, so there won't be much happening besides around the house. But, despite being cut off from other people or fun activities, we've found plenty to do with each other. St. Patrick's Day is always very anticipated around our house because its the one day of the year the kids get Lucky Charms. The boys were very excited to dye the milk green, but they ran out of green dye and dyed the almond milk (for Trevor) purple instead.

The girls came on a walk with me in the afternoon with their matching bows.

We've done a ton of reading this winter and spring- even more than we usually do! I read to the kids as part of their school for about an hour during the day, and many nights we read a chapter or two before bed too. Natalie loves to haul books around and "read" them to herself (she has some partially memorized-others she just jabbers as she turns the pages) or ask someone to read them to her.

The kids-especially Asher and Leif-have made lots of little creations with their Legos. This one is a replica of one of the spacecrafts that SpaceX has been creating and launching recently- I don't remember its name, but the kids have them all memorized.

Leif has been keeping busy creating little metal figures that my mom gave him for Christmas. You can also see the magnets in the background, which are Trevor's favorite, although all the kids play with them.

Natalie and I take a walk to the ponds around our house several times a week. It was getting warm enough to only need a light jacket, but its cooling off a bit again right now. This picture was taken a day or two before Natalie accidentally ran right into this pond. She ran down a little slope that leads to it and was very surprised when she stepped into the water and fell in- I guess she didn't realize she can't walk on it. I had to fish her out and get her home quickly for a bath.

Like I said-we have been reading a lot lately. Besides reading for school, the boys have become obsessed with the Harry Potter books. Leif started reading just before Asher did, so Asher has to wait for Leif to finish a book before he can read it. Its good because it slows him down and gives him time to read some of the books he is reading and talking about with Austin's dad.

And most recently, we made Easter sugar cookies. They have butter and milk in them, so Trevor couldn't have any, but he was still very eager to help decorate, then he got to have an Oreo while the other kids had a sugar cookie. My favorite cookie was the puppy that Leif made for Natalie and decorated with pink frosting and pink sugar because pink puppies are her favorite (for the record she has never actually seen one- she just thinks she is one). Heidi also used a duck shaped cookie and put pink frosting and sugar on it to turn it into a flamingo because Natalie also likes 'mingos.