Easter Fun!

The weather was perfect for an Easter weekend at home!

On Saturday afternoon we died some Easter eggs. Note to Mommy - every year we buy more dye even though there are 3 or 4 boxes of it in the Easter box - Don't buy dye next year! 

Putting stickers on our finished-colored eggs. 

We even found a fun Easter mold for jello jigglers - they were a big hit! 

Easter morning - up early and ready to go see what the Easter bunny left! Parker was very excited to see that he even had a fun bucket to collect his loot in. 

The Easter bunny left some goodies for Riley next to the gate. Princess shoes, an Easter book, and some Aladdin princess stuff for her castle!

Running through the backyard looking for eggs - and some Easter loot! 

Riley figuring out the whole egg hunt thing. 

Taking a seat to look in the eggs once she figured out there were treats in some of them! 

"Look Daddy - candy!" 

Full bucket of eggs! 

That crazy Easter bunny! He hung Parker's basket in a tree! A new book, and some fun new stuff for his Hot Wheels track. 

Eggs hiding in the sandbox. 

Riley turned out to be the best egg hunter of all. Maybe because she is closest to the ground. 

Daddy helped with a lift to get the egg off the side of the truck. 

Kid loot - silly Easter bunny. 

One of the funniest things of the day - the kids discovering Peeps. Mommy does not enjoy Peeps at all, but the kids took down one each before breakfast. Yuck. 

Tried to make bunny pancakes, did not succeed. 

Delicious Easter dinner. Ham, Ben's Favorite Potatoes, Broccoli Casserole, Homemade rolls, and deviled eggs. 

Good boys who ate dinner even had Strawberry Shortcake for dessert!

Happy Easter!

Springtime at the Zoo!

One Spring day a few weeks ago we decided it was finally warm enough to head out to the zoo for the day! We hadn't been to the zoo since Halloween and Riley is now much more able to have fun and appreciate the adventure.

One of the highlights of the zoo is always the Otters. It is so fun to watch them swim by and the kids always try to chase them. 

The Otters are so playful and love the attention in the glass - they swim by and pop their heads up if there are kids there to play - and if we are early enough we usually have the viewing area to ourselves! 

Strolling along Elephant trail. Riley was excited to be able to walk with big brother along the trail. 

Photo op with Mommy by the pandas. 

We have never seen the pandas outside in all of our trips to the zoo. And a new baby panda was born this winter and we finally got a chance to see it! 

Up the tree is the new baby panda. What we didn't know at the time was this was the first time that Bao Bao had climbed a tree! It was pretty funny to see her climbing up and down. 

Looking for the elephants. We didn't get to see them well today, they were in one of the side pen areas. 

Following lots of adventure we stopped for lunch. We bought some things to supplement the food Mommy brought from home. One of the things they had was couscous - apparently Riley loves it as much as mommy! 
Looking forward to a lot more zoo trips this year!

Enjoying the New House

We love our new house and how open it is. 

 The kids have a bathroom of their own now that Mommy and Daddy have one in their room. It has a nice big bathtub for playing.

We can spy the kids from the couches in the living room and make sure they are playing nicely. Sometimes Parker likes to spy into Riley's room to see if he wants to go play with her. He says his favorite part of the new house is that everyone's rooms are all together. 

We even have some friends close by who we can have over for fun afternoons of NASCAR. Our friends the Andersons came over one of our first weekends and brought Richie and Brady. Riley was excited to have someone else around to read to her. 

The downstairs living room is mostly the playroom - Lots of train tracks, race tracks, and lego creations are sure to be built here. 

Mommy is so excited to have a nice big kitchen were the boys can help out with the dishes. They crank their music up and get washing! 

A regular activity at the new house is running circles though the family room and kitchen. They would run forever if we let them, but it gets a little noisy (and dangerous when they start to elbow eachother out of the way!)

Moving Adventures - Oh My! And Did I Mention Uncle Jim?

Life in DC continues to be quite an adventure for the Culver family. In January we were notified that our landlords were intending to put our house up for sale. Although we loved our neighborhood and had made some great memories in Silver Spring, we took the opportunity to look for a place down in Virginia to spend the rest of our time here. Ben was finishing up a course at Ft. Belvoir south of DC and then would be spending time at both the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. It made sense to get him a little closer to those places. The added bonus for us is that we have some other friends in the VA area who we would be closer to!

After looking for a couple of months we finally found a place that we think will fit us very well for the next couple of years. And so the moving began! 

 Many days while Parker was at school Riley and I would spend time packing up some boxes. She wasn't always the most helpful, but she had fun doing it! Since we would be moving ourselves this time we tried to do as much as possible early on. I do hate packing and moving, but we used the opportunity to unload a LOT of stuff!

Mrs. Karen Halverson was one of the ladies I was lucky enough to spend time with at Ft. Sill. One opportunity I had was to serve with her on the Patriot Spouses Club Board. She gave all the board members tiaras to wear during meetings. Her philosophy was that if you were ever doing something that might seem boring or not so exciting, wear a crown. Riley agreed. Helping Mommy unpack boxes in the new kitchen while wearing a crown.

 We had a full weekend starting March 15th of moving. We went back and forth to the new house at least twice a day for 3 days. On Saturday night we took the kids out to our favorite Mexican restaurant in Silver Spring. That much moving is apparently hard on a little girl - we tried to give her ice cream for dessert, she was not having it.

For his 4th birthday Parker was able to get a booster seat to ride in the backseat of Daddy's truck. It was his chosen seat whenever we made trips back and forth to Alexandria. Riley got lots of time with Mommy and spent some time on the phone - probably talking to Ma Pat, because that is what Mommy usually does in the car.

When we finally figured out when we would be moving we made a call to the best moving helper we know - Uncle Jim! He flew out to DC from Medford to help us get stuff done. He flew in on Tuesday night. We were able to get some loads done on  Wednesday and then decided that we would pick up the U-Haul trailer a day early - on Thursday since we really just needed to do furniture. Well, after rallying with Mommy, Uncle Jim and Daddy we moved enough stuff to the new house on Thursday to sleep there Thursday night and only have to go back to the old house on Friday to get some leftover stuff. It was awesome! A project that could have taken 4 days took 2! Yay for Uncle Jim!

Riley and Parker were spoiled with lots of extra love from Uncle Jim - he kept them occupied while Mommy tried to organize chaos!

Cheese!

We found a great restaurant on the waterfront - Chadwicks, where we went to celebrate our completed move. Good food, good view, and great for kids. Will definitely be back in the future!

Parker wanted to be sure to show Uncle Jim the "new" Air and Space - where the space Shuttle Discovery is! It is an awesome place and we love going there.

It is always hard to get everyone looking at the camera at the same time...

Parker and Uncle Jim checking out the awesome helicopter with the blades that fold up.

Uncle Jim even went exploring with us while Daddy was at work one day and we found a new park close to the house!

It took some convincing to get Riley down the slide, but Uncle Jim was happy to help.

On Uncle Jim's last night we decided to embark on a new adventure - BOWLING! They had a ramp for Parker and Riley to use to roll their balls, and bumpers of course. The kids had their own lane and just kept going over and over and over. Parker loved it - which is great because Mommy and Daddy do enjoy a good afternoon of bowling and beer.

Speaking of beer...we might need to find one of these for the house.

Riley was hit-and-miss with bowling. But when she wasn't into it Uncle Jim had plenty of snuggles for her instead.

Daddy is a pro.

Uncle Jim is pretty awesome too.

Riley getting some help from her coach.

"Yay!"

We wrapped up the night by going out to dinner. Mommy doesn't usually allow pacis or a "B" out of the house, but anticipated a very tired baby so we made an exception. Lots of Uncle Jim snuggles at dinner.

Thanks for visiting Uncle Jim! We love you and we will see you soon!