Happy Easter!!

HAPPY EASTER!!


We woke up to a beautiful, warm Easter morning!!

Our Easter preparations began yesterday. Here is Cati working on the much-anticipated cinnamon rolls that we enjoyed for breakfast this morning. We only make these about twice a year, so they're a real treat!


Here are the Easter goodies that the kids woke up to this morning. The basket has some chocolate, side walk chalk, and bubbles from us. The bags around them are from Aunt Ginny. The flower vase with M&Ms is the kids' sacrifice "jar" that the kids filled with beans, adding one for each sacrifice that they made during Lent. The beans were replaced with M&Ms last night.

Here are the kids this morning!

(Yes, Cati had a haircut.)

Chiara is behind there somewhere :)

"Smile, Chiara!"

Chiara breaks into her jelly beans from her Easter bag.

Matteo said that his favorite Easter goodies were the bubbles...

...and stickers (from his Easter bag).

Elena woke up a bit later and was happy to find a bag for her, too! (Look - her hair is finally long enough to be messy when she wakes up in the morning!! Oh, and on a side note, she cut her first tooth this week!)

She was happy to have someone finally help her to open her bag.

I replaced the top picture on the blog with one from after Mass this morning. Here are a couple of others that we took...

The whole family!

This afternoon, we're going to a friend's house for an egg hunt and Easter dinner!!

We hope you all have a wonderful, blessed Easter!!!!

Embroidery

I have never embroidered. I have quilted, crocheted, cross-stitched, and sewn on a machine, but I have never embroidered. Recently I came across an amazing website embroidery website, and it is just so wonderful that I had to share! It's called Mary Corbet's Needle n' Thread.

I have enjoyed this site for so many reasons. I was first attracted by all the resources for beginners: a video library of stitches, tutorials (I've found 2 tutorials so far, one on lettering and text, and one on shading), free patterns (some with stitching recommendations). As I looked further, I saw pictures of her work, which I believe are breath-taking! Look at this project that she completed for a priest's vestment - be sure to scroll down to see detailed pictures. (Did I mention that she's Catholic?)

She seems to post something new every day. Some days it is an update on a project that she's working on. On other days she posts about other embroidery that she admires. Today, Holy Saturday, she posted pictures of a vestment of St. John Vianney and discussed it's embroidery.

I've so much from this site so far. I've found it very inspirational! So, I just had to share, especially since I know there are several of you who enjoy sewing, too!!

Will I start embroidering now? Well, time is always my biggest obstacle :) However, obstacles exist to be overcome! Maria and I (maybe Cati) will be trying our hand at some simple embroidery. Perhaps you'll see some of our efforts on the blog in the future!

Wishing a blessed Easter to you all!!!!

She's standing!

Elena started crawling a couple of weeks ago, and during the past week she has really been working on pulling up. As you can see here, her hard work has paid off!

I still haven't taken a video of her crawling, but here she is standing...

Do all of your babies love tissue, too?

All of my babies have loved tissue and toilet paper. They love how easily it tears apart, and if given the opportunity, they will quickly make a HUGE mess with it!

Peek-a-boo!

Listen carefully and you will hear Chiara blowing bubbles in her cup of milk with a straw :)

Spring Break in CT

St. Vincent College had Spring Break last week, so we drove to CT to visit the Rosamonds! It's great to live so close to them now - it's ONLY a 6-hour drive!

The kids had lots of fun playing...

pushing Mary Grace in a box



both of the babies playing

The kids had lots of playing with the train set...

...and Keva planks. Here's a tower as tall as Maria!

Maria writing words for JP to read - one of his favorite pasttimes!

Drawing pictures...I think this may have been Matteo's first truely representative drawings that I could recognize. It's the Earth with trees on it.

After we put the littles ones to bed at night, we let the older kids stay up a little later. They enjoyed reading and playing Banangrams!

There's a very important rule at the Rosamond's house - CLOSE THE BATHROOM DOOR AT ALL TIMES!! Unfortunately, our family just couldn't remember this rule, so JP enjoyed several impromptu baths :) On the last day we were there, I think he had 4 or 5 trips to the bathtub!

The day before we drove up to CT, Elena and Chiara came down with colds. Elena needed breathing treatments again by the 2nd day and Chiara had a double ear infection by the end of the trip. Elena stayed her usual happy self, but Chiara was pretty miserable :(

So, after looking through all of our pictures from the trip, I realized that we didn't take a group picture of all of the kids! How did we forget that, Kel ??

Also not pictured is the adults having lots of fun chatting and playing late night card games :)

Thanks for everything, Kelly and Chad! We had a wonderful trip!!!

Inspired by the Winter Olympics

We've really been enjoying watching the Winter Olympics together in the evenings during the past 2 weeks. There's been a lot of talk around here about the "Snow games" as they've been dubbed :)



So, I dug up some pictures and videos of the kids enjoying time with winter sports. We may never be Olympians, but we sure have had fun!