Happy Easter!

We had a great Easter here at the Underwood house.  This was the first holiday since Ella was born that we didn't have family here which was a little sad, but we made the most of it and went to church and had lunch with friends.

We focused Ella's Easter basket on educational things this year.  We got her two more sets of flashcards which she loves and my mom was able to find the ABC flash cards from the same brand.  If you are looking for great flash cards, I highly recommend the DK My First cards.  We love them and they hold up really well to Miss Destructive

I loved the Easter Basket I got for Ella from Etsy

Ella was having nothing to do with having her picture taken that morning.  Oh and please ignore the huge bruise on her face!  She face planted the Saturday before Easter on our wet tile floor - we thought she might have broken her cheek bone with the sound it made - her crying though only lasted about 10 seconds so we figured she was fine.  I loved the dress my mom ended up finding for her at Doodles in Houston.  She even ended up having the perfect bow to match it that Keith's mom had gotten last year for her.

This is the only picture that I was able to get after church... shortly after this Ella covered her whole dress in guacamole and I am still praying that it comes out!  Maybe one day we will get a few more family pictures so our poor child can remember what we looked like when she is all grown up!

Church Egg Hunt

Ella was super excited about the Easter egg hunt portion of our time at church on Saturday.  We had prepared that morning and showed her how you find the eggs, pick them up, and put them in your basket.  Unfortunately as soon they were in her basket there was no chance of her giving them up!

She was so good waiting patiently for them to tell her she could start.  You could tell she was going crazy having to wait to go and get those eggs!

But when it was time for her to hunt, away she went!

She was so good at picking up the eggs and putting them in the basket!

She even decided that she could hold both the basket and pick up the eggs herself - she is so independent these days!

One thing we hadn't informed her of was that the eggs would be filled!  We had been practicing with empty eggs at home so when this realization was made she was soo excited! 

Then she realized that there was candy just laying on the grown so she had to show us that!


Eventually the basket got to heavy and Daddy had to start carrying it!

 

 Or maybe it wasn't too heavy she just needed both hands to double fist the eggs!

The church did a great job with the egg hunt and it was all so organized and the kids had SOOO many eggs to find!  Ella was probably able to find about 25 and that is with almost 75 kids there.  I can't wait until next year!

Church Easter Carnival and Egg Hunt

This weekend our church held their big Easter Carnival and Egg Hunt!  In order not to have picture overload I am splitting this into two posts - one for the Carnival and one for the Egg Hunt!

This is the normal face I get from EK when I try to take her picture... she is never impressed with a camera if you want to take a portrait.  She is more of a candid shot kid (explains why I never have pictures of her face!)
Easter Basket from here
Outfit from Peaches and Cream bought consignment so doubt it is still available 

Someone is starting to get into that cheesy smile stage!  I got quite a few of these after the picture of her looking like she wanted to hurt me!

The Easter Carnival was great!  They had so many little stations set up and all kinds of things for the kids to do!

Ms. Jana showed Ella how to color an easter egg ornament

She actually did color it but was so distracted by everything going on she never looked while she was coloring!

She had to guess which duck the candy was under... which she got right both times she played... surprise surprise!

She got to play the ring toss

Got to color on the table... a favorite pass time of my child

She got to bowl with a giant easter egg and even hit 4 of the pins!

and she even got to pet chicks

and ducks!  This was probably her favorite part of the carnival - my kid loves her a petting zoo!

Then it was time for the egg hunt...

It's Gonna be a HOT Summer

The temps have already reached the mid 80s here in Tyler and I just know that means things are going to be hot and miserable come June, July, and August.  It's ok though... we have a pool membership, we bought Ella a water table, and we have a sprinker which we decided to give a try a few weeks ago.

As first she was not impressed with it and wasn't exactly sure what she should do, but Papa took her hand and showed her how it was done! 

Eventually she decided she could go at it by herself and girlfriend got into it!

She even decided her balls needed to be cleaned off a bit (and for once I got a picture of her face!)

I know we will be spending the whole summer outdoors so I am extremely glad that we have expanded our water toys for outside to keep us nice and cool come July when it's 112 and I want to die each time she heads to that backdoor!

She's a Louisiana Girl at Heart

Another big tradition for Easter with Keith's family are crawfish boils on Easter Sunday.  Unfortunately we were not going to be able to make it home for Easter so instead when Keith's parents came up last week we had them bring their crawfish pot and we were able to get some crawfish from a place north of Tyler and off we set to boil up some delicious food!

We made sure to have all of the essentials in our boil including: mushrooms, two types of sausage, onions, and even artichokes!  Of course there was plenty of beer and friends to enjoy all of the Louisiana Easter festivities!

Ella Kate was so enthralled with watching Keith clean the crawfish and at one point tried to stick her whole hand in the ice chest.  Guess they looked like fun little pets!  She is such an animal lover.

She made sure to oversee all of her daddy's work!

It was shortly after this picture that the hand went into the icechest!

We even convinced her to hold one of the live crawfish!  This was as close as she came to eating one though.  I tried really hard to get her to take a bite but she looked at me like I was nuts!

She did have fun trying to force feed Nona the shell of an already peeled one though.

Guess it was a good thing her BFF Kloe was over to play with to distract her from the fact that the rest of us were eating something and she wasn't. 

Hopefully next year we will be able to have a few more boils and show our Tyler friends what its like to have a little bit of Louisiana in Texas!

Oh and just a note... my friend Carrie who I have mentioned on here before is going in for her induction today... please pray for an easy labor and birth for her.  I can't wait to meet little Owen!

Kool Aid Egg Dye

Happy Easter to all of you!  I have quite a few posts that I am working on with all of the pre-Easter activities that we have been doing around here!  It has been a busy past two weekends and I sure wish I could post things right after they happen, but then life happens.

I will start my Easter Extravaganza with our egg dying experience!  Needless to say trying this with an 18 month old may not have been the best idea, but you live and you learn.  I decided instead of buying the egg dying kits that turn your hands colors and takes forever to get off of you and your clothes I would try the Kool Aid egg dye method I have seen all over Pinterest.

Source: heyjenrenee.com via Tracy on Pinterest

I went to the store and bought about 10 different types of Kool Aid and got the eggs boiled and outside we went to try our hands at this!

Luckily my MIL was here to assist in the nonsense!  I was able to mix up colors while her and Ella dropped the eggs and stirred them around.  Next year I will definitely purchase one of those egg holder things that make it easier to drop the eggs.  My kitchen spoon just wasn't good for little people hands!

We tried many times to explain to Ella Kate that she had to be careful and not stir to hard, but that really didn't go over well.  Shortly after this picture was taken she spilled one of the cups of Kool Aid all over herself which in turn caused her legs to break out.  Guessing she might be allergic to something they have in the Kool Aid!

She did really enjoy watching the eggs turn colors though.  But she was not so much a fan of having to wait for them to dry!

Here are our finished eggs!  I was extremely impressed with how bright the colors turned out.
Things we learned for next year:  Don't use grape kool-aid if you want purple... it comes out more brown.  Mix Cherry or Strawberry with the Blue one to get a prettier purple.  Add a little bit of orange to the lemonade to brighten up your yellow.  Add strawberry or a dash of cherry to the pink lemonade to brighten up your pink.  The green, cherry, blue, and Orange/Pineapple Mango all give you extremely bright colors just like you want!

We really enjoyed this project, minus the leg breakout and the bath that had to be given in the middle of it and will definitely try again next year!