Easter Season 2016

This Easter Season was a bit crazy. Easter came really early this year, just a week and a half after St. Patrick's Day, so it felt like it was sneaking around a corner and then shouting Boo! at me. I wasn't ready. I had, however, been Outfit Ready since January when we were all holed up due to sickness. (Thanks, Carters and Old Navy, for your free shipping!) I ran out to get treats for the baskets, ordered Carson's orange grass on Amazon since I couldn't find it in any store and prayed it would arrive in time, and pulled a few goodies from the closet to give to the boys. I believe I pulled it off, but I was forcing myself to be laid back about how little effort I had put forth to make the day special for the boys. (If you know me at all, you know that ill-prepared is not something that goes smoothly with my personality.) (But I had no more physical hours to make it any different so I had to accept it.) (Next year will be better and I'll be able to enjoy it more.) (Back to the story.)

The Saturday before Easter was double-soccer, porch-finishing, yard-working, grocery-getting, so it was packed and meant that we were up until midnight setting up the egg hunt and baskets and porch furniture and such. (If you know me at all, you know that midnight is not a preferred work hour for me.) (In college, during group projects, they would send me to bed during all-nighters and then I would take the early-early am shift so they could all go to bed.) (Pre-kids I used to be a morning person.) (Not 4am like my friend Christina, morning person, but 5 or 6 was more than fine.) (Having kids has me wanting to stay in bed til 8 each day which obviously never happens.) (Will the bone weary exhaustion ever leave?) (Enough tangents! Sorry.)

Easter morning, the boys did their scavenger hunt (and for some reason the entire videos of that are gone, not sure what happened with the camera card) (ugh), ending with their baskets. I have very few pictures of this because, well, camera card. (They just aren't there. I know I took them, and now they are gone.) But the boys had fun, they were happy with the things they got (I always include sunglasses and Austin's at the point where he'd been expecting that which is fun). Carson did a great job "finding" his basket and "playing" with his new things. We got ready for church, took some pictures of Easter Outfits, went to church (which was awesome), and went home to re-load the car for the trip to McKinney.

Once we were all there, we ate lunch, did the egg hunt and spent time just sitting around while the kids opened their eggs, ate candy and played together. We hadn't painted eggs yet and had a house to clean so we left a little earlier than we might have normally wanted to. Besides, the neighbor kids were there asking to play with DTI, so it felt best if we just left so they could do that. It was a whirlwind evening and we got the boys in bed just in time to be considered on time for bedtime, so I'm glad we left when we did, even though it meant less time with family.

Austin's was on the porch

Carson's was in the front room.

Graham's was in the garage by my car.

He sat right down and started looking through.
We had to cut him off, though, because it was super chilly!

Smiley Drooley Ham

Taking a picture of all three boys is nearly impossible. It takes 60 attempts to get one good one. Here are the best three we got.

The mint green/turquoise color seemed to be the color of the year this season because practically every kid at church had it on.

He crawled right after his eggs and cracked them right open. Here and here are videos of the cuteness.

Graham did a great job finding eggs, often seeing them where I hadn't seen them. No pictures survived of Austin hunting for eggs.

Happy Easter 2016

He loved banging eggs together.

Then it was time to open gifts from Nonnie and Gramps.

Surprise! Another chicken who dances to the Chicken Dance.

When we got home, Seth put the boys to work painting their eggs while I vacuumed the house.

The only surviving pictures of my mantel decor. gah!

Our new porch and sidewalk; March 2016

When we bought our house (almost) 7 years ago, we wrote into the contract that they leave the front porch furniture. This included a swing, a rug, two chairs, and a table. We didn't love the furniture, but it fit the space perfectly and them leaving it behind meant we had one less space to find furniture for. We were moving into a larger home than the one we had in Atlanta, and filling all the spaces was expensive. That furniture lasted us 5 years before it really started to show its age and look like it needed to be replaced. The furniture itself was in pretty solid shape, but the cushions needed recovering and the rug was torn and tattered. I couldn't find replacement cushions, so that would have been expensive to hire out and the look we wanted for the porch was less traditional anyways, so we decided to spend some of the tax return on getting new furniture for the porch.

As a part of that, I decided I wanted to power wash the porch because it was dirty and had so many patches that it needed some sprucing up. I borrowed one from a friend and it was a fun two days getting the whole thing cleaned off.

At some point, someone painted it to look like stones.

The pressure washer did an awesome job! But then I just wanted new concrete even more.

So once we power washed the whole thing, we decided to finally spend the money to replace it anyways! (eyeroll emoticon) We got a concrete recommendation last year and just couldn't justify the money spent in 2015, so we waiting a full year before actually using them. I texted him to come back and give me a new estimate and afterward found the old one. We bit the bullet and told him to get started and three days later, we had a new walkway and new porch. Here's the journey in pictures!

At the same time, we hired Robbie to come remove two of the three columns and to change up the remaining one. I wanted the porch to be more open, more modern, more clean-lines. We enjoy sitting on the porch and the columns were just in the way of viewing and the design of them kept the house stuck in "a little bit country." We don't want to overhaul the look of the house, but we want to keep it transitional, hanging onto the edge of traditional while still being aware of the original era of the house and that it's now 2016 (nearly 60 years after the house was originally built).

First, all the furniture items started arriving as well as the new rug. It was in our front room for about a week until the porch was poured and ready for stuff.

This was also right around Easter which is when the camera card decided to start acting weird. Lots of pictures that I know I took from those weeks are gone now, so you'll have to bear with what I have left:

If you look close, you can see the McQueen I buried.

Just showing the size of the step.

Now there's only one column. 

I put our mailbox here since he wouldn't be able to get it on the door.
He didn't deliver any mail, though.

There's a slight problem with the sidewalk, where water puddles in one of the squares, so I need him to fix that, but otherwise we're thrilled with the update. The porch being the same as the house is SO nice! People comment all the time how much easier it is to get in and house of house and the porch furniture is the perfect transitional style we were looking for. I'm in love!