Van Christopher Lundren's birthday!

My sister Jessica and Eric's little boy was born this morning, a whopping 8 lbs, 13 oz and 22 inches long.  Such a cutie!  He slept the whole time for his first meeting with his Aunty Jami, but that's ok, since I'm sure I'll get to see him a couple more times before he flies away to Slovenia.  I really loved holding him and watching him sleep; his nostrils would flare as he breathed.  However, I had ZERO inclination to ever go there again.  Very happy with my two, all done, thank you very much!  Still, they are fun to hold when they are sleeping at this size!

Meeting Gramps...also still asleep!

And the proud new momma!

Still waiting for Eric to make it here!  The volcano erupting in Iceland messed up his flights out of Europe and he spent several days trying to get to Montana, finally got a flight out of Rome and hopefully will get in by 11am tonight.  Left Rome at 2:30 am it sounded like, so one very long day for him and Jess both. 

Must be a boy thing

Chase is in LOVE with Sterlings dune buggy.  Everytime he sees it he can't hardly get over to it fast enough to climb in and pretend to drive around.  He doesn't really seem to want to go for a ride yet, although I'm sure he'd enjoy it.  Mostly he just wants to play!  Checking it out with Uncle Tricky...

And headed back for some more!

My baby's growing up!

Chase has really seemed to be growing up fast this last month.  He's added lots of words to his growing vocabulary.  His favorites include "outside", his very favorite place to be, "dunk", his work for drink, "yummy" for candy generally although he uses it for food too.  He calls most animals of a certain size "bunny" although he's working on chicken, doggy and kitty.  He also like "bonk" when he's trying to head butt you, and "Boom!" when running into things. 

He has really started to like wearing hats around, and Aunty Linda was nice enough to find him the great one on the last picture here.  He's been such a sweet kid, although he's starting to figure out temper tantrum.  I suppose it's about that time!

Riding Lessons with Gramma Auntie

Carter has been working with Gramma Auntie, aka Auntie Linda on learning to ride and having lots of fun.  She's doing really great considering she's only 4.  I love watching her whenever I get the chance although Chase seems to think riding lessons is a good time to see just what he can get into at Linda's house. 

Carter is very determined to ride all by herself so really loves riding in Gramma Aunties corral where it's safe for her to do so.  Now it's just working on remembering and applying everything Auntie's telling her!  I love the picture below, she looks pretty determined!

And headed back to the barn for more!

Carter and her Hero

Every little girl needs a hero, and I'm so glad mine has such a wonderful one: cousin Blake!  She was up for the weekend and Carter stuck to her like glue every chance she got.  She looks so darn happy whenever Blake is around it makes my heart happy. 

Playing in the Park

Although it's still a bit cold out, it's definitely time to start hitting the parks!  It works as a pretty good bribe for Carter too when I need to get a couple things in town.  Chase just likes to be outside, it really doesn't matter where. 

Not sure if you can tell from the picture but both Carter and Chase went down together, laughing the whole way.  Chase enjoyed the slide until he found the steering wheels, then he was pretty much hooked for the rest of the time we were there.  He's such a boy!  I'm always surprised how empty the parks are this time of year, I'd think more kids would be itching to get outside after the long winter, but maybe we were just too early. 

Looking forward to lots more parks this summer!  Chase is quite a bit easier to take to town than his sister was at this age.  He seems to like the adventure of it more, and will happily travel with Robert, my sister or anyone else he thinks is heading somewhere fun...as long it's his idea.  He, of course, does NOT like getting left somewhere.  At any rate, here's hoping for a fun summer!

Easter

Easter baskets at our house were filled with lots of toys, especially lots of toys for outside...Chase's favorite word and place to be right now.  Hadley was hoping for more treats, but I think she made out ok regardless!

Chase thought the sunglasses were the best, especially since they were just his size!

Then we had to hurry and get all dressed up to head down to mom's for a quick egg hunt and some brunch. Carter was very excited to wear her new dress but for the life of me I couldn't get any nice pictures, but the crazy ones will work too.

Hunting eggs at Gramma's house...I only managed to get one picture that turned out. 

Then it was off to Gramma Pats.  They were having a hunt and lunch at 2 pm but the kids were already coming down off the sugar high and getting tired and grouchy (me too, or so I've been told!) so we headed up early to say hi then head home for naps all around.

Ann tried to get a family picture before we left but by then it was way too late.  Chase had had all the fun he could stand and wanted to go home!

Probably won't put this one on the Christmas cards.  Oh well, will try again some other time! We had a nice easter with all the family and then was glad to just get home.  The rest of the day was pretty quiet...which was nice too!  Hope everyone had a great easter and that the easter bunny treated them well!

Easter Egg Hunting

On the Saturday before Easter, I loaded the kids up and we headed to town to hunt easter eggs at the Pfau's home in Lockwood.  Jessi and Corinne also came with Keenan and Evers in tow.  The Pfau's had a really nice set-up for friends and neighbors kids, and Carter was sure excited to see how many eggs she could find!  Chase, was much less excited although he did get into the spirit once he realized there was candy (or "yummy" as he calls it) in the eggs. 

Carter looked so cute with her hair in pony tails that she even let me curl.  I can't believe how fast she is growing up on me!  I love this picture of her with Keenan peeking out behind her.  It's hard to get her to pose with a nice smile some days.

It was hard to convince the kids to wait for everyone to get ready when they could already see the eggs laying out.  Evers really wanted to go get some eggs!

Chase wasn't too sure about the whole hunting eggs things.  He was much more into people watching.  Once he found an egg, he didn't really want to put it in his bucket until he saw a couple of the big kids doing that.  Mostly he was happy to open an egg, eat the candy, then maybe go find another.  It was pretty cute to watch.

Carter was much more serious about her egg hunting and managed to get her whole bucket filled up in short order.  But even better, was happy to share the eggs she gathered up with a couple kids who showed late after all the eggs had been picked up.  I was so proud of her!

The easter bunny even made an appearance.  Carter thought it was great, but Chase cried every time he even got close.

Thanks Kat for inviting us!  We had a great time, despite the weather.  It was not the best day for hunting eggs...it was cold and rained.  Later we snuck up to the Harvest Church egg hunt because we were suckers for more punishment apparently, and it rained, snowed, sleeted on us.  We were pretty glad to get back to the car!  All in all a fun way to spend the morning!  Chase managed to turn two jolly ranchers into 3 miles of sticky goo.  Later I felt Carter pulling on my shirt and looked down to see her pulling 3 jolly ranchers off my shirt that had gotten stuck on.