Video and Picture Round-Up

It's been a busy past couple of weeks, and the loss and recovery of our hard drive was an unfortunate addition to the mix, so I've been a bit remiss in posting. Now it's time to get a little caught up.

Easter came and went and, along with it, a new exposure to the wonderful world of Easter candy for Gabe. Since they start selling Easter candy just as soon as they clear off the Valentine's Day crap--sometimes even before then--Gabe's had PLENTY of time to grow to love the various sugary options available to him (he's still working through the last of his candy, but I expect there will be a serious backlash when he's finally out and there's nothing in the house to eat but graham crackers again).

We went out to my folks' house to join the community at large for their yearly egg hunt. The hunt is held on the football field. In the past, they've done a pretty good job of spreading stuff out into two separate, easily identified sections: one for kids under 3 and another for the big kids. This year, not so much. They tried to separate everyone, but there were no clear boundaries, so the big kids were pretty much everywhere and the little tikes were left to scrounge for whatever was left. I've included a short video, just to illustrate the utter chaos. I didn't film long because, well, first, it was boring, and second because it was so windy it was terribly noisy.

He didn't get much of a haul out of this, but he is still young enough to not realize what he's missing out on by lazily picking up a few pieces of candy here and there. We'll really have to work on that killer instinct that will get him pushing and shoving his way to an Easter basket full of goodies.

Norah didn't really get to participate in the big egg hunt, but we let her have some fun with her basket anyway.

Later that day, we did a plastic egg hunt at Mom and Dad's, and Butts did get to help with that one--in that we put a plastic egg in front of her while she was doing her "sexy pose" and snapped a quick picture.

The next week, my Dad turned 60. To surprise him, cousin Amy flew in to help celebrate. We didn't tell Mom or Dad that she was coming, and we worked it out so that all of us were at their house as they were getting home from work last Thursday on his birthday.

While we waited, Gabe played with Tanner and Sydney in the basement. Entertaining only because three kids are spazzing out.

When Dad got home (since he teaches, he gets off earlier than Mom), the kids all hid in a closet to surprise him. Amy was sitting on the couch, acting nonchalant. We wanted to see how long it would take Dad to notice her (he is a bit notorious for being unobservant, a trait that I've sadly inherited). His reaction is pretty good, and it took him FAR too long to see her sitting there, especially since he looked at her at least once.

The next weekish, Amy stayed and we spent a goodly amount of time inflicting our children on her. She left Tuesday night, but she made enough of an impression on Gabe that he was actively pissed off all day yesterday that she wasn't still around to entertain him and his only option left was to deal with me.

There's Amy next to my Dad. I include this picture because it is the only one we got with her in it (and, as I learned when Famous Uncle Ben visited, if I don't include pictures of the people who visited, then I hear about it). I guess she got the rest of the pictures with her in them.

Gabe wearing Dad's hat. Notice Libby's hand. He has an aversion to hats and she's holding it on his head long enough for me to take a picture. I think he has a promising career as a chimney sweep ahead of him.

And, finally, a video that I think helps to illustrate why eating out with kids isn't really that much fun. Gabe is actually pretty sedate at this point--mostly because three of us are paying attention to his entertainment needs. As we tried to talk amongst ourselves, he took to running around the table and crawling on everything. By this point we hadn't even ordered food yet. Good times.

And that's our last two and a half weeks!