Easter and the week preceding

A few highlights from this week!  Stephanie started T-ball, which has practice twice a week and then she will eventually start playing other teams.  She loves it so far... the coach is great.  He is really good with the kids and I have been impressed at how he layers their activities to increase the level of complexity.  The first day some kids didn't even know what it meant to run the bases and just headed straight to the outfield fence after tagging first and most of the others cut the corners and didn't actually touch any bases after first, but by the second practice they were running them like tiny little pros and having a blast doing it. 

This is her outfit she picked for the first practice (she insisted on holding up a craft she had worked on that day). She also did not want Gwen in the picture and stood in front of her.  Gwen didn't mind...

Gwen at practice.

Later this week, we went to an arboretum in Raleigh for an unconventional Easter Egg hunt.  The eggs were hidden around the property and spelled an early spring bloomer...

Not her best writing, but not all of the writing surfaces were ideal.

We went, OF COURSE, with our neighbors.  After the hunt, the kids won a prize, in this case seed for bees and butterflies.  Perfect, as we are trying to eradicate our grass and have a pollinator habitat.

Gwen had to get in on the seed show-off.  She was completely exhausted and I was very surprised to see that she still had enough energy to mimic her sister. 

Everyone was quite tired the next day, so I decided on a lazier day at home.  But I did dress Gwen in a super cute outfit and had to get the camera out anyway.

And that brings us to Easter.  We had a really good basket hunt complete with clues, but none of my pictures turned out great- mostly because Stephanie was enthusiastically running around in search of the next clue and even the fast camera couldn't keep up.  She actually spotted an outdoor one from the window upstairs, but still took the time to first dress in the Easter outfit she picked out weeks ago, complete with head boppers. 

At the end of the hunt, she tore into the presents, but then expressed that she was sad that the hunt was over, which is funny because as we were doing the hunt, I was thinking that I was always a little sad when it was over when I was a kid. Both kids were a bit exhausted by the time church was over, but we did naps all around and had a good reset!