Easter Festivities

We had a lot of fun this Easter weekend, doing the traditional things.
We kicked things off with some egg dying:
First, Dane put eggs in all the colors.

Then he'd check to see if they were satisfactory:

Pink didn't work very well.
But green did!

I was impressed with how well he used the little wire egg dipper thing.
But then hands were just easier.


Dane chose blue as his favorite.


Then, Easter Sunday morning, Dane found what the Easter bunny left him:

The Easter bunny left quite a mess, leaving carrot crumbs and muddy footprints all around the Easter basket. Fortunately for us, the mess was completely localized on this piece of posterboard that happened to be right under the Easter basket. Whew.


For the record, I didn't know my lumpy, pajamaed form was in the picture.
Rainbow beanbags!

And yes, I know Dane has his pajama shirt on backward. He does it on purpose because he thinks it makes him look like a football player. He says letters on your shirt mean you're fast.

We had a little family photo shoot before church. I must say, I think I live with two very handsome boys.

Joel taught Dane how to look dapper:

But Dane had his own ideas of how to pose:


Easter family!

After church, we headed down for our 9th Annual Easter Dinner with the Penovich family.
The Penoviches are so kind and friendly that they often have many guests for Easter. But this year they are empty nesters, and we were the only guests! (Including Kenji and his friend, Spencer). We felt special.
Our gracious hosts, Todd & Lanez:

After a delicious dinner, they hid 75 Easter eggs for Dane, Kenji, and Spencer.



Sometimes he'd have to race Daddy to get the eggs.


Dane found more eggs than Kenji and Spencer put together!


Happy Easter!

P.S. I have a few fun videos to post, but I'm having trouble uploading them. Stay tuned!

A Dollop of Dane

I have a whole bunch of random pictures of Dane that I've never posted, so here they are for your enjoyment.
Dan likes to exercise on his bed, and like any male wanting show off his impressive physique, he does it shirtless:

Then, as only a toddler can, he does it pantless:

After sufficient warm up and after being fully clothed again, Dane shows off his impressive jumping skills:


Sometimes, if Dane misses his nap, he'll fall asleep on the couch. He's never been one to sleep in random places; he's never fallen asleep during dinner or while playing with his toys or anything like that. But if he's really tired, he can provide us with cute sleeping shots:

Dane has also recently become interested in what it means to be blind. He knows the story of Jesus healing the blind man, so he often pretends to be blind and then is miraculously healed.
Sometimes, tape causes the blindness.


Other times, he just closes his eyes and wanders around, bumping into things:



Dane loves to give his cars bubble baths. On this day, he joined in on the action.




We had chocolate fondue for our Family Home Evening treat one night.

So Dane grew a mustache.

He loves to be seen hotrodding in Lightning McQueen.

Dane's been successfully potty-trained since December, but we recently transitioned from the froggy toilet to the big toilet. He was very proud!

So there's a glimpse into our every day life with a sweet boy. He makes our lives fun, happy, and amazing.

P.S. I'd like to draw your attention to the new pregnancy countdown that I put on the top righthand corner of the blog. What is up with that silhouette? Do you know anyone who looks like that when they're pregnant? Okay, fine, I can think of some people, but certainly not me. If I had any computer programming skills, I would adjust the silhouette to have love handles, another chin, and overall larger features. And a popped bellybutton. That didn't happen with Dane. Weird.

Grandma's Birthday

We took a little weekend trip up to Grandma's house in Boise to celebrate her birthday. We had a great time that is most aptly described as filling.

Mom said she wanted to celebrate the big 66 by eating, so that is what we did. We made it into Boise just in time for a 6:00 reservation at the very fancy Barbacoa, where we enjoyed a delicious, unique dinner.

If you click on the photo, you can see some of the unique features: beet chips in the mashed potatoes, fried spaghetti, and my Latin steak is sitting on a cactus leaf.

We had a dessert of chocolate cheesecake with ancho chile ganache and carrot chips. Then, when we told the server it was Mom's birthday, they came out with an unexpected cylinder of cotton candy with a tiny brownie and candle inside!

Dane had been complaining since we got to the restaurant that his stomach hurt. I figured he was just hungry or maybe a little carsick from the trip. He ended up eating a decent amount of food. But then after dessert he said he was sick. Again, I didn't take it too seriously because he says he's sick every time he coughs or sneezes. Joel picked him up to leave, and Mom and I went to check out the fancy schmancy bathrooms, which, incidentally, were not marked for women or men, leading to awkward wandering and wondering by all patrons unless you were lucky enough to catch someone walking out.

Anyway, when Mom and I got back out to the car, we learned that Dane had thrown up on Joel right there in the restaurant and neither of us had noticed. Poor boys. But throwing up was what Dane needed, because he was his bright, chipper self the rest of the night.

Then we went home and enjoyed some delicious tuxedo birthday cake. Triple dessert in one night!

The next morning, birthday morning, Mom the Early Bird got up and had made pie and quiche before we even woke up. It was the best quiche I've ever had and very filling. Mom had been telling us how annoyed she's been at the geese around her complex; she wished she could catch one and cook it for dinner. But we decided that was taking the birthday weekend of eating too far, so we settled for letting Dane feed them and threw rocks in the Boise River.

Dane suddenly needed to go potty, so Joel attempted to help him learn the bladder voiding ways of the wilderness.

But it didn't go too well, so we cut our adventure short to get dry pants.

We went home and had warm blackberry pie with ice cream (dessert count: 4).

Then Mom wanted to show us a few of the sights in Boise. We checked out Boise High School and then went to the Idanha Hotel and visited the French pastry shop, where we got two delicious brioches.

Mom then introduced us to the Basque district of downtown Boise, where we ordered a Basque lentil soup and a freshly baked Basque baguette. We now had all the ingredients for a nice downtown Boise lunch.

We stopped for a little visit at the gift shop at the Basque museum, where Dane tried on a red shepherd's beret, called a txapel. He looked so cute Grandma couldn't help but get him one.

Here we are in the Basque district, and you can see the Basque flag behind us.

We went home to enjoy our lunch, which was much more delicious than I expected. I really enjoyed it. And then we had brioche and more cake and pie!

Mom is the Relief Society president in her ward, and a ward member--mother of two young children--had just passed away after a very long fight with cancer. She had some compassionate service to do in the afternoon, which Joel accompanied her to do. It was a very sad situation.

Then Mom's neighbor Michal took us out for ice cream (dessert count: 6) and regaled us with tales of Judaism and Boise State linguistics. She was a fun person.

We then had a delicious dinner of pork roast and roasted vegetables, followed by pecan pie and more cake and pie! And a milk chocolate Easter egg! (dessert count: 8)

Mom's brother David and his wife and son, Janet and Brian, came over to chat. Both Mom and Dane were just so exhausted from all the eating that they snuggled up and dozed in the recliner.

We went to church the next morning, and it was the saddest meeting I have attended. The ward was saddened by losing a beloved ward member. We happened to be sitting in front of the man and children who had just lost their wife and mother. A deacon gave an amazingly heartfelt talk about his gratitude for the resurrection. I couldn't keep from crying throughout the rest of church, and I never even met the sister who died. It definitely makes one grateful for the Plan of Salvation, but your heart can't help but break for the family who lost a loved one.

After church, we made lunch, ate more cake and pie, and packed up to go. As Joel and I packed up the car, Grandma and Dane snuck in one more story:

We're glad we got to spend Mom's birthday with her. I hope I portrayed well enough how well we ate during our short trip; I think we felt full constantly.

Happy Birthday, Mom, and thanks for being such an amazing host!

As a side note, I've had a couple requests for belly shots, so here you go:

I feel generally like I'm not as big as I was with Dane...but then I remember my friends who are about my size in their ninth month, and I realize that it is pretty much inevitable that I will be a whale again. Oh well. Oh whale.

Finally, last night we had Family Home Evening and enjoyed playing outside in the twilight. We played Ring around the Rosie, London Bridge, Round and Round the Garden, leapfrog, and playing on the swing.

It was a good weekend. I'm going to need a few naps to catch up.