This weekend we enjoyed the company of the mini-Marx's and Andie. Because of an upcoming surgery, I will not be able to lift and play with these adorable creatures for 2 months. So the parental units, Michael & Andie, blessed our lives with one last weekend with our youngest grandmonsters. Since I'll not be with them for Easter, we did a few Easter-ish things so I felt like I was not missing that part of my year.
They arrived Friday evening and we had lots of fun getting to the toys they play with here and watching trains and trying to get some nourishment in them before bedtime. Andie's birthday happened last week so Hayden helped me bring out the presents and we had fun opening them with mom. By 9 or 9:30pm we finally had them both in bed. This is extremely late for the mini-Marx's.
Saturday Pa fixed us pancakes for breakfast with bacon. Yum!! We invited Mimi, Papa and Tiny out in the afternoon. So the morning was spent playing trains, watching some DVD's (since Pa & Ma have power we do that more here than in LaGrange where power is still limited...gotta love it!!). I had printed some Easter pictures so we did a little coloring project. We also made 'Arm Pit Fudge'. This is a must recipe for a fun family activity. I'll share the recipe later. We tried to get them to rest at quiet time but we ended up being totally unsuccessful at that. Hayden was up before Papa got here.
The first thing we did when Mimi & Papa arrived was cut Mimi's hair. It now takes 3 of us to get through this process. Andie and I had moved the stool from my bathroom to the breakfast area and set up the scissors before they arrived so we could get right to that project. After getting mom to sit on the stool, Papa held her hands and talked with her, Andie handed me clips and I cut Mimi's hair. Then, we sheared Papa's head. He is a much easier and faster cut. Claude prepared pulled BBQ chicken for sandwiches, potato salad and 3 bean salad on Friday. The BBQ sauce he used was the Dr. Pepper flavored one he got from me for Christmas. Ahhh...nectar of the gods!! We had a delightful lunch. I had placed 2 M&M's in each of 16 plastic Easter eggs and Andie hid them around the dining room, kitchen and living room portions of the house. We all enjoyed Hayden and Bailey's eager search once they were aware there was candy inside those eggs. Hayden even shared his M&M's with Papa. Then Hayden hid the eggs several times for the adults. He gets so excited that he hides them and then tells you that they are hidden and where so you can go find them. By the final hidings he was just pouring the eggs out of the basket and arranging them around it. Hayden and Bailey had a movie to finish before bed, which they had started before quiet time, so they headed to the basement and Papa headed back to Georgetown with Mimi and Tiny and some 'Pitter Fudge'.
Sunday Claude and I had Church in the morning. I wore my Easter suit. I have one special suit that I wear on Easter Sunday and so I wore it this Sunday. I left Hayden and Bailey eating their breakfast at the island in the kitchen and gave them their coloring books for Easter gifts. While we were gone they enjoyed a playtime in the whirlpool tub. It is just a big pool to them. It was quiet time when I got home. Andie was given a baking stone from Pampered Chef for her birthday. I also ordered one for Claude. During quiet time I made homemade pizza sauce and homemade pizza dough with the intent to break-in Claude new baking stone. Bailey slept but Master Hayden was allowed up earlier. He enjoys that attention on his own. Andie and Hayden used my hand mixer to make pudding parfaits. When I was a child, this is the kind of mixer I remember using. I wanted one in case we had no power and I needed to mix something. So I purchased one some time back. Hayden thought it was great fun.
We used the late afternoon to play on the hill.
Andie boiled 6 eggs and found stickers for the kids to decorate them with. One of the Christensen Family Traditions for Easter as Claude was growing up was going to the ranch and roll their Easter eggs down the hill. In order to have Bailey and Hayden learn this tradition we decorated eggs with stickers (Bailey was much more diligent at this project than Hayden. Especially when she found pink stickers!!). Then Pa showed them how to roll the eggs down the hill. Now our hill is every bit as steep as the hill at the ranch. Pa did roll his but Hayden and Bailey preferred throwing theirs. This was great fun and we totally destroyed several eggs. The tossing of the eggs took us all the way down the hill to Claude's altar and we ended the evening with a sand box play time. It is very hard to get a picture of eggs leaving a child's hand and going through the air. Many pictures were taken in the attempt to get this recorded digitally.
Now I go back in time to when we went outside to decorate the eggs. I purchased via catalogue mailing a parachute for the kids to play with. Hayden used to play with one at a gym Andie took him to in Maryland. Hayden was soooo excited to see this parachute that he really was not that interested in decorating eggs. He just wanted to play under the parachute but mostly inside the parachute. Claude, Andie and I would wave it up in the air and fill it with air and he would run around under it. But he was much happier when we let him sit on it and we pulled it around and back-and-forth so he rolled around on the inside.
When we wore out, he just rolled himself up in it and rolled down the hill wrapped inside the parachute. I'm sure there was a paper that came with the parachute warning us about not letting a child do this but we were careful and he was so very happy doing it. Hayden has borrowed Ma's parachute to use at his house. After eggs and parachutes, we went inside and Hayden and Pa made pizzas on the new baking stone. We were all really tired by the time this day was complete.
Monday morning Andie gathered her things and loaded the blue Marx-mobile. Hayden and Bailey gave us lots of loves and they headed back to LaGrange.
Thank you Marx Family for filling our weekend with family, fun, joy and memories to hang on to.
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