Our neighborhood hosted a post-Easter egg hunt on Monday because many of the kids were out of school, and Josh held his own in the more difficult "older kids" hunt in the woods. Molly and her fellow babies picked up eggs off a grassy field.
The most interesting part of this Easter celebration was our first annual egg toss. Josh was thrilled to get to wear a protective garbage bag and couldn't wait to get his hands on the raw egg. There was no way this situation wouldn't end in disaster, so I volunteered to be Josh's partner to negate any impending craziness. Sure enough, when it was his turn to toss the egg to me (I was standing about four feet away from him) he tossed the egg right at my face. I luckily turned to the side and it bounced off my forehead before splattering on the ground. I'm sorry to say we don't have this moment caught on film.
Molly has recently developed a liking for books (much to my delight), so this morning I took her to Charlotte's new children's library. She had a good time listening to songs, stories and nursery rhymes from a librarian, and then she enjoyed climbing in the computer chair. It gave her a good vantage point for smiling and shrieking, two of her favorite past times.
Emily and Vivy and our friends Sarah and Owen also joined us at the library.
The result of the "Photo Session with Live Bunnies" arrived in the mail today, and I should not have been surprised to open the envelope and find this! Once again my kids have delivered a weird shot, and we've wasted $40 on "professional photos." This time we have Molly licking her lips as if the little bunny looks tasty, and Josh looks like he was drug out of bed for a picture. If anyone wants a copy of this gem, I have five extra!
At least the bunny looks cute.
We've discovered that one way to keep Josh entertained for at least an hour is to wash a load of clothes. He and Molly are both fascinated with our new see-through washer doors, and Molly usually shrieks and laughs when it goes on spin cycle. When the wash cycle gets exciting Josh likes a close-up view, and during the less interesting phases he'll play with toys or look at books on the floor in front of the washer.
I convinced him to tear his eyes away for two seconds this afternoon so I could get a picture of him looking at the camera.
We hit the motherlode of fun this afternoon with our first trip to a new sports complex near Chris' old office. Josh wore himself out playing on the inflatable castles, and then Steph and I battled a large group of 8-year-olds in a game of laser tag. Luckily many of the 8-year-olds had little strategy, so it wasn't too hard to find and shoot at large groups of them with my laser gun.
Molly and Vivy did a lot of hanging out in their strollers, and Molly certainly enjoyed looking at all of the people and bright lights. She even got to hang out with Uncle Randy while Josh played in the castles.
Once a month all of the moms in my neighborhood get together to chat and watch the kids run wild. I first started attending this group when Josh was six weeks old, and the group included him and about four other kids.
Today, the host mom outdid us all and had a small inflatable castle for the kids to bounce in. There were so many kids that we had to clear it out for an "all-baby bounce," which Molly thoroughly enjoyed. I was just struck at how much this group has grown--there were nine babies born in the neighborhood within a year of Molly, and Josh and his playgroup friends will be going to kindergarten together next year. Crazy!
We encountered this fine bird Saturday at the Carolina Raptor Center, which is just north of the city. The Raptor Center rehabilitates owls, hawks and eagles and keeps the ones that can no longer fly or hunt on their own. We saw everything from screech owls to bald eagles, and Josh seemed pretty interested in them all, especially when he realized they all had names written on plaques outside the aviaries. This is Maddie, a horned owl, that was part of a presentation we attended.
We were actually a little hesitant to attend the afternoon show, which was called something like "Courtship and Mating Habits in Birds," but we felt OK after the speaker assured the large crowd of families we would be spared the gory details. We learned a lot about a few of their birds, and Josh amazingly paid attention the whole time. Molly, on the other hand, played in the dirt and squealed occasionally. We joked (sort of) that the screech owl had nothing on her.
Here's the standard picture of Molly in the backpack that comes with any outdoor trip these days.
This is the eagle aviary, which had three bald eagles. You can see two of them in the upper right hand corner of the picture.
I'm including this picture because I was surprised to find a bald eagle sitting like a chicken. It never occurred to me that these regal birds too much rest and aren't always soaring through the air or sitting upright. I think this one was a little annoyed that I kept taking its picture.
Today I was provided with an excellent opportunity to undo four years of University of Florida brainwashing that has turned Josh into a "go Gators" robot. UNC is playing in the Sweet 16 in Charlotte, so I took Josh out of school early and we went to Bobcat Arena to watch the team practice. We rehearsed saying "Go Tar Heels" in the car so there wouldn't be any embarrassing Gator blunders in front of my fellow alumni.
