Happy Easter!

     Owen had quite the Easter experience this year - 5 Easter egg hunts! He's a pro now! The first one was the Thursday before Easter,  at his normal day care (Amy). He was in charge of getting all of the blue and green eggs, and his friend Emmalyn was in charge of getting the pink and purple. Apparently he had fun because he kept talking about finding eggs by the little tree.

     Then on Friday, Owen went to his previous daycare (we switched at the beginning of this year because our lady, Johnna, had a baby and moved) because Amy was closed. Owen was pretty excited to go see his old friends, whom he remembers pretty well because Johnna gave him a photo album for Christmas. Anyway, Johnna was planning an Easter egg hunt for that day in her HUGE backyard, and hid something like 105 eggs! For 3 kids! She said he found 24 eggs, but was getting kind of distracted because she has a swing set in her yard and he LOVES to swing and slide. But he had a GREAT time!

      Next up was the Easter egg hunt in Elkader at the city park. LOTS of kids showed up! We got there about 10 minutes early, which ended up being a bad thing, because all Owen wanted to do was play on the playground equipment! He was crying and kicking and screaming, but we made him wait. We also made him take a picture with the Easter Bunny - he didn't think too much of that!

     They finally started, and for the kids 1st grade and under, it wasn't really an egg hunt, but more of a pick up as much candy from the ground as you can find, which I thought was kind of dumb because eggs are much easier to find! Oh well, he was having a good time and even shared his candy with us.

    When the candy had all been picked up, we headed over to the playground for a while.

Weee!

   Later that night, it was time to color eggs. He had colored some at Amy's house, too, so knew just what to do. He'd drop them right in and tell me when they were done, or if they needed to go in a different color, too. He was pretty upset when there were no more to dye!

Boppa had to make a DOT orange egg

Ryan and I had fun coloring eggs too!

    That night, the Easter Bunny came to Nana and Boppa's house and hid his basket in the house and his eggs outside, so Owen had to search! We directed him around the house, telling him to look in the bathroom, the office, in the corners, etc, until he found his basket hiding in the corner of the dining room. The  bunny brought him candy, a Tow Mater shirt and an Elmo movie. Then we headed to the yard to find all the eggs! He did an awesome job!

     Then, this last weekend, we had our first camping trip (in our new camper! More about that some other time.) and since we hadn't seen Ryan's family for Easter and three of his cousins were camping, too, we had one last Easter egg hunt at the campground. They all had a great time, but now we have TOO MUCH CANDY! : )

   This weekend Owen is off to see his cousins with Nana and Boppa in Omaha, and then on Monday is starting back up at his "old" daycare with Johnna because Amy got a new job. Owen will miss his girlfriend Emmalyn, but I think will be happy to get to see his buddies Zadyn and Alex again and hang with the boys!

Picture Montage

Yeah, yeah. I stink at keeping up on my blog. So here's a BUNCH of pictures to tell some stories about what we have been up to since Christmas.

January:

Daddy went shopping and bought Owen an Iowa stocking cap (the exact same one that Ryan has) and a new sweatshirt. Here he is modeling them.











I tried to catch him making his "mean face", but he would start to laugh before the picture was done taking. Here's the most ferocious one I could capture:

Here are a couple of him sleeping. In the first one, he's pushed all the way into a corner of his crib because he has so much stuff in his crib - stuffed animals, pillows, books, and blankets. But God forbid I take any of them out!

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This second one shows him falling asleep for a nap with Fruit Loops and his computer. He LOVES that computer! He's so cute when he's sleeping! Oh, and when he's awake, too!   --->

My little punky LOVES to help! In fact, he will throw a fit if you do laundry, unload the dishwasher, start the dishwasher, give the dogs food, or sweep without him. So here he is, sweeping up his hair after a new buzz cut.

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"My wuv egg, Mommy!" --->

February:

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Owen also loves to help cook and bake. So here he is "cooking soup" (stirring water) while I was making minestrone.

And here he is helping me with brownies.  --->

Over here is my Valentine, sporting the sunglasses he got from his friend Macy at daycare.

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Showing off his cool "tattoos" - Lightning McQueen and on the other arm is Mater. 

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We went to Muscatine to visit Ryan's family and stayed in the hotel. We learned Owen can swim by himself! Well, with a life jacket of course, but he can move on his own!! "My swim big boy!"    --->

Video here

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We went shopping the next day and found this AWESOME Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack for Owen. He didn't get much say in the matter. : )

March:

March started out pretty warm, so we decided Owen needed some rain boots for all the mud (and winter dog poop) in the yard. He did get to pick these out! I had to cut off the tags and the plastic binding them together so he could wear them through the store. He will wear them rain or shine. --->

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Owen stayed at Grandma Angie's for a weekend, and when he came home, I had underpants and a potty seat for him. He wore the underpants for a while that day (Captain America ones shown here), but later on he got to running a little too fast and fell and face planted right onto the edge of the coffee table in this picture. LOTS of blood and swelling...

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This is actually him a day or two later. The picture doesn't really do it justice, though, poor baby! He didn't look like himself and had a hard time using a sippy cup. We did lots of snuggling.

We haven't been pushing potty training 

too hard. He's not ready. He will go every once in a while, but he mostly refuses.

<---Our March weather was AWESOME! This is March 15, and Owen is enjoying a ride home with his window all the way down. It's a good thing our car has window locks on it though, because he figured out pretty quickly how to do it himself.

On the slide at the playground. --->

Playing with Play Doh and his dump truck (an almost nightly ritual).

And last, but not least, what little boy doesn't love to blow bubbles? This is the first year he's been able to do it by himself, and he loves it!

So that's what we have been up to. The crazy kid gets smarter everyday and its so fun because I don't know what he learns all the time at daycare, and then out of the blue he will say something and I just think, 'Did my two year old just say that?!' He's SO smart!!!!!!!!

Christmas 2011

Christmas morning, Owen was feeling better. He had slept all night without throwing up, and was ready for presents!! He found a few under the tree to open:

A remote control car

A black and red ball that he calls his Spiderman ball.

A variety of CAT trucks

After that we packed up and headed to Muscatine. I was still kind of weary that he was going to throw up again, but thankfully that was not the case. He was a little more shy and clingy when we first got there, but we just snuggled a bit and that was fine with me! : ) Surprisingly, Owen was more interested in eating all the appetizer stuff than I was - I think all the puke the night before kind of ruined my appetite. After a little while, though, Owen started yelling, "Mommy!" and whimpering. I picked him up and he moved so that his tummy was on my shoulder. I think he had a tummy ache and/or was having a hard time pooping. Needless to say, he filled up 2 diapers in about 1/2 an hour. I'm still not sure what was really the matter with him. Must have just been a 24 hour bug, because after he got that out of his system, he was good to go!

The rest of the afternoon we hung out at Ryan's grandma's house and ate and opened presents. Owen got to play with cousins. Then it was off to Ryan's mom's to open more presents!! I can't even remember everything that he got (probably because it's April now!) but there were some clothes and an art desk in there. We spent the night at Ryan's uncle's house and the next day made our way up to Elkader. 

There, Owen got to play with his cousins and be spoiled with more presents. He got lots of colors and coloring books, trucks, books and movies. 

I had taken the whole week between Christmas and New Year's off from work, and would have LIKED to spend more time in Elkader, but Ryan had to go back to work and Owen was coming BACK to Elkader for New Year's so his mom and dad could have fun : ) So we left on Tuesday morning. Then comes the fun job of opening the seemingly millions of presents and finding enough batteries for everything!

It was really nice to be able to see everyone over the one weekend, but it does get to be a lot of travelling. Thank goodness Owen wasn't sick longer than he was, and we still got to have a good Christmas!