Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! We had a fabulous weekend here -- the weather was perfect, we had some great friend time, and there was egg hunting-springtime fun for all. :)

Here's a little of what we were up to...

Egg hunting! Will had a spring party and egg hunting at school, and then we all went to the egg hunt at the church on Saturday. Here's Will looking very festive and egg hunt ready...



It's hard to believe that next year we will also be chasing this one around the egg hunt! But for now she is quite content hanging with Daddy.



Here is one of many hilarious attempts at taking a picture of four little people all at the same time!



It wouldn't be Easter weekend without a little egg dyeing, of course. This year we tried using Kool-aid as our dye -- and it worked amazingly well! I saw it on Pinterest and thought we would give it a shot. And it totally worked! It smelled great and Todd said it was a little shout out to Nebraska, the birthplace of Kool-aid. :)



Not quite ready to participate in the egg decorating, but she'll certainly hang out at the table with a good snack and watch the entertainment. :)



Gotta say, I think these two little ones are pretty darn cute. And their incredible affection for each other is not so bad to watch either. It isn't super obvious from this picture, but Bellamy shakes with excitement every time Will gets anywhere near her. And she lets out a special little squeal reserved just for him when he leans in to hug and kiss her. I wish I could bottle it and get it out every time they scream at each other as teenagers. :)



I love this one of Will and Elyse -- they look so grown up. Sharing a moment just the two of them...



More Easter egg hunting! Will decided he had to use a different basket for each one...and clearly the Halloween spider had to be one of them. I was informed that spiders attend Easter in Central Mexico, so obviously we had to include one in our festivities.



One more of our little lady.



Yay! Spring is officially here!

Long overdue

Another month snuck right past me! Well anyway....

Of course the big news of March is always the rodeo -- which may be Will's favorite time of the year. I really think he is more excited for the arrival of the rodeo than he is Christmas...so there was a plethora of picture taking, but we will try and limit the craziness here. :)

One of the best parts of going to the rodeo with little ones is watching the mutton busting. Nothing like watching little kids attempt to ride sheep...and always falling off. Will is so excited to do it himself, but you have to be 5. Here he is trying to pick up some tips...



Just a little bonding time with a few of his friends...



Gotta check out the tractor! He looks like such a natural climbing up there. :)



Pony rides! He was SO happy -- we had a few people comment to us how natural he looked. Where the heck are we going to put a horse??:)



My guys. Enough said. :)



During spring break we had double excited -- it was the rodeo, but it was also AJ time! My sister came down to spend the week with us and Will was SO happy to have her here. I think she had to go home to get some rest from her vacation, but we did love our AJ time.

Hanging out at the park...



What is this stuff? And why did mom sit me in it??



I love this one because of Will's expression -- it showcases just how much he adores his baby sister. And how the world may want to look out for her. :)



Hey there bright eyes! Our big 9 month old sweet girl!



This past weekend I had to go to Dallas with a group of students from school, so we decided to make it a little mini-vacay for all of us. While we were there we took Will to the Lego Discovery Center since that is the new obsession around here. Uncle Eric met us there and we had a morning of crazy Lego fun!

Poor B and the curse of the 2nd child. She was sooooo tired, but was a trooper while Will had his Lego day. Here's an attempt at a pic of the two of them.



Yeah, this is great...



But I'm having a GREAT time!



Our other big adventure in Dallas was the Dallas World Aquarium. It was such a cool place! I'm really not sure which Will loved more...Legos? The rainforest? Jeez, tough call.

A huge bonus at the Aquarium was the bird feeding. They give you a blueberry to hold in your hand and the birds just come and snack right out of your hand. Of course we had to check that out a few times...



Matching a flamingo? Doesn't get much better.



So there it is, another month gone by!

Moving and shaking

Our sweet girl is 8 months old! With her big smile and personality, she has definitely changed the Tones house! Whether it's chasing down poor Georgia or her big brother's Legos, she is definitely a girl who knows what she wants. Luckily both her targets are good sports and still think it's funny...we'll see how long that lasts. :)

All dressed up and all kinds of places to go -- bring on the birthday parties!



Spending a little time with her buddy...



Hello pretty girl...





And what's the big guy doing these days? Birthday party after birthday party...the introduction of preschool has brought with it an endless list of Saturday trips to birthday parties all over the place! Here's one of his favorites -- it was at a stable, had a train, magic show...I mean, really.



The big guy filling out his Valentine cards to his classmates -- he looks so grown up!



And just like that, it's almost March. We asked Bellamy what she thought about it and she couldn't believe it either.;)

Look out world...

Our sweet girl is 7 months old -- hard to believe, but so fun! She changes so much every day, and it is so fun to see her learn and take in the world around her. Of course much to Will's disappointment the world around her she is trying to take in includes his legos, animals, shoes...anything she can roll/scoot/wiggle herself to get to that is his.:)

So, I had this great picture in my head using this little wand from Nana. She loves to play with it and I just knew I could get a great picture with a caption about how she has us under her spell or something...but of course I haven't been able to get her to hold it up AND smile when I have a camera around. Instead in this one she is sidetracked once again by Will -- who she adores. I guess the caption isn't about her casting the spell, but rather that he has one on her. She LOVES him. And he loves her. And I love it. :)



Of course with the second half of the first year comes all the fun food photos! So far Bellamy loves anything and everything that we will let her eat. She is very curious right now and food is no exception. And -- I'm sure this will come as no shock to those who know her mother -- she is determined that she can do it herself! Miss Wanda says she won't let anyone touch her bottle and as soon as we introduced her to the world of finger foods she has been so adamant that she can feed herself. Georgia is of course loving it since many more attempts end up on the floor and not in Bellamy's mouth right now. :)



Beets! So delicious, such a ridiculous mess when they eat them. Of course it didn't help that she's sitting next to Will and cracking up at him in the process, which sends beet juice flying...whose idea was this again???



Look out world, here she comes!

Christmas?!?

Whoops! I guess since every time I saw the last blog post I saw a picture of Santa, I was thinking I had spent some time here talking about Christmas. Then I looked at the date of the last post and thought, Christmas?!? I didn't write about Christmas?!?

Apparently that couple of weeks was kind of a blur...we had the Christmas crud around here, which everyone except Todd caught some version of that sidelined all of us a few days at a time. Luckily it all seemed to hit either before or after the big Christmas weekend, but did fill what should have been our break with lots of visits to the doctor and extra time on the couch. Other than that, we had a fantastic holiday break filled with time with our family and friends that we love so much. It was great to have Jess and Mom in town for Christmas morning and then see all of the Tones crew in the afternoon on Christmas day!

So here's a couple of highlights...

First of all, the adorable stockings that now hang on Will and Bellamy's doors...courtesy of Miss Wanda. It's always the first Christmas gift she gives the kids at her house -- Will got one for his first Christmas and now she has made one for Bellamy. I love the stockings, but even more than that, I love that we have Miss Wanda in our life to see us through these early years with both our children. She is such a blessing!



Mr. Will in his Christmas eve finest...not the finest pic, but I waited way too long to try and get one and he was ready for some dinner and bed by the time I got a chance at him.




Along with all the Christmas excitement, our little lady turned 6 months old! I love this stage of the first year -- they start learning and growing so fast that every day is a new exciting adventure for them. She is our little joy, always quick to smile with those bright eyes. For now, she is completely infatuated with her big brother -- she lets out a squeal every time he comes into a room. Gotta remember to get that on tape for ammunition later...;)



Will was introduced to Legos this Christmas -- and is infatuated with them. See how serious he is just looking at the box? I think Todd is loving it almost as much as he is...it's giving him a nice trip down memory lane. Now if we could just get him to be a little more self sufficient in his building...right now Todd and I are getting really good at Legos right along with him!



Here he is enjoying his tent from Santa -- mommy and daddy are sure glad Santa managed to get it assembled and into the living room successfully Christmas Eve night...and that Toys R Us is open late in case of toy emergencies. Apparently one of the reindeer stepped on the original tent, but Santa managed to put a call into some special elves to hook him up and get things back on track in record time. ;)



Will checking out his new scooter from Nana and Grandpa. Again, Todd is spending a little time on memory lane on this one - we happen to have another scooter at the house, so they have been going out "scooting" together the last few weeks, which is so fun to watch. Of course on one of the scooting trips Todd actually fell on that same memory lane...but it was a great chance to teach Will that when you fall, you get up, brush yourself off, and scoot on home to ask Mom for a band-aid.



Well, that's Christmas in a nutshell. 2011 closed out exactly as it should, with our friends and family and reminders of all our blessings. Can't wait to see what 2012 has in store!

Visiting Santa

Over the weekend we went for our annual trip to see Santa at the Enchanted Gardens. It's a nursery that we love all throughout the year -- Will because they have goats and other farm animals on site, Todd and I because they have awesome plants and even more important for us, excellent planting advice. But for this trip we took advantage of Santa being on site and their cute gift shop for a little Christmas shopping. :)

Will did great with Santa -- he doesn't ever like to sit on his lap, but he likes to sit right next to him and have a little chat. He wouldn't tell us what he was going to tell him that he wanted...but hopefully with a little help from some elves that were listening we will have a successful Christmas morning. :)

Hey, stop listening Mom! This is between us...



Um, let's see, did I remember to tell you everything??



Poor Bellamy -- we interrupted her very much loved nap time and she was crashed out hard in the car when we got there to see Santa. Add that to the fact that she's fighting a cold this weekend...she was not so sure what all the excitement was about and her normal smiley self was a little absent for the photo op. But she grabbed on tight to Santa's beard and hung out with him while her big brother gave him a few suggestions to bring her too. :)



Snacking on a cookie from Daddy!



Merry Christmas everyone!

Just follow the blue dot...

Um, so Christmas is next week. And I am just now talking about Thanksgiving...oh well.

The week of Thanksgiving we took our first road trip as a family of four. I was very nervous about traveling with two -- 1000 miles is a long way for anyone, much less the littlest ones! But luckily we have been blessed with great traveling children -- I guess if we're going to live so far away at least everyone travels well. :)

Along the way Will noticed that Todd and I kept checking the GPS maps on our phones and wanted to know what it was. We showed him how there is a green dot where you start, a red one where you finish, and the blue dot is where you are currently. He became fascinated with the dots the rest of the trip. When he was hanging out with his friend Brody in Kansas City he asked him if he wanted to come over to his house. Then he preceded to tell Brody -- "you can come over, just tell your dad to follow the blue dot." :) We did a LOT of car traveling that week -- stopping in Kansas City, Omaha, Farnam, back to Omaha, Dallas, and then home. But the kids were troopers and all we heard from Will was, "where is the red dot today???"

It was a great trip -- we were able to see so many people and Will always has such a good time. Here he is checking out the tractors...



Thanksgiving day we were in Farnam at the annual Bellamy family luncheon. It was great to get to see so many people in one place and give Will an opportunity to have some quality time with the rough and tumble Bellamy boys. At one point he came in with grass in his hair and dirt in his teeth SO proud of himself! A little tackle football among the under 10 group never hurt anyone, right??

In the meantime, the little lady was busy trying out peas for the first time...Thanksgiving seemed like an appropriate day to give solid foods a chance. :)



And it wouldn't be Thanksgiving in Nebraska without a little football watching...go Huskers!



Every year the Friday after Thanksgiving the shopping area by Jess's house has a great Christmas parade. We decided to go and check it out this year and enjoy a little time with Uncle Bob and the crew. It was a little rainy and a little cold, but not too shabby for this time of year. It was Will's first experience with fireworks and his expressions were priceless!





During some of our many hours in the car I got the brilliant idea to play a thankful abc game. We would each come up with things we were thankful for that started with different letters and I kept track of them on my phone. It's funny to think back to what we said and how it was definitely a testament to how the trip was going. There were times that Will was thankful for airplanes...probably definitely ready to get out of the car (around the same time Todd said he was thankful for alcohol...) Most of the time he was thankful for whatever animal he could think of or the names of his friends we had just seen or he missed from school. But he was also thankful for Daddy -- as we all were as he drove us across the country. :) It was wonderful to get to spend time with so many people that we love and we look forward to next time -- but ready for people to come to us!