Daddy, Daddy, Daddy

Jason had been working a long stretch of 7 PM - 8 AM nights and the kids weren't really seeing much of him.  So one afternoon when he woke up the kids bombarded him.

You can't help but love that.

Easter....yikes

Our Easter Celebrations began with a little egg hunt at Benton's preschool.  Benny and Paisley both enjoyed the hunt.  The big prize was the egg with a quarter in it.

 Why do these two never want to look at the camera?

 Benny's preschool class as well as another class along with all of their siblings.

 Next up was the Primary Egg Hunt.  We also had a few games.  Benton and Paisley tried the spoon race.

 They were big cheaters holding their egg on the spoon, but so did pretty much everyone else also.

 Next up was a sack race. Tab is in the florescent yellow jacket.

 Paisley, slowly but surely made it across the field.

 Finally the hunt, itself.

 The Easter Bunny hung some eggs in the trees and Tab was jumping to try to reach one.

 Grandpa came up to visit for Easter.  I can't remember why, but my mom was out of town, so he came up.

 The kids woke up and went to work looking for where the Easter Bunny hid their basket. (And yes, Benton's shirt is on backwards.)

 Per Jason's request, the kids follow a trail of jelly beans or candy filled eggs which leads to their basket.

 Sharing the wealth with their sister.

 Tab was quite pleased with finding the eggs.

 They finally located their "basket".  Since my dad was coming up, I had him bring one of my mom's ginormous stainless steel bowls.  This is what my parents always put our community Easter Candy in.  It was kind of fun to do the same for my kids.

 Jason was working nights, so when he got home he ran out and hid the eggs and then we sent the kids out.

 Paisley really had a blast finding the eggs.

 As did the rest of the bunch.

 

 

 Then came the discovery of the final egg.  Paisley beat Benton out by a milisecond.

 Which didn't go over well.

 It was quickly confiscated.

 And happily placed in his egg carton.

 As you can imagine this didn't bode well.

 She was quickly won over by being allowed to eat as many eggs as her little heart desired.

Bikes

 We tried and tried to convince Tab to get rid of his training wheels but he wouldn't.  He has a hard time trying new things.  If he thinks there is even the slightest chance that he will fail he will do his best to not have to try at all.  So removing the training wheels was a tough one.  With Jason's sporadic schedule, it wasn't all that easy to go about it either.  One evening we made a go of it.

We went with the traditional hold on to the back of the seat and chase them around method. 

 Which was all fine and good...

 Except that Tab kept turning around to make sure that Jason was still holding on and would of course crash as a result.  He gave up but Benton was more than happy to give it a go.

We have since discovered a much more brilliant method.  We (when I say we, I mean I) removed the pedals from the boys bikes and they used them like those strider bikes.  They just scooted along until they got the hang of balancing their bikes.  Then I put the pedals back on and gave them a steadying push and they were off.  Start to finish, it took about 1 hour for them to figure it out this way.  Both Tab and Benton now ride without training wheels!