Oops - Easter!

I'm late with a post - what's new? :) We hope you all enjoyed a beautiful and blessed Resurrection Sunday! We thank God for the amazing gift of salvation! We enjoyed our first Easter at our new church (you may remember from our Christmas letter that we're part of a church plant in downtown Bellevue called The Downtown Church). We enjoyed serving in Eli's classroom that day and seeing all the precious children dressed up in their Easter clothes - so cute! All the little girls in their adorable Easter dresses made me very excited about buying one for my own daughter next year! :) After nap time we headed to Nana and Pa's house for an egg hunt and a wonderful dinner. Eli had a great time finding his treasures hidden around the houseand was delighted to find lots of M&Ms hiding inside the eggs. He definitely had more sugar that day than he's ever had in one day before!

Happy Easter everyone...praise God that Christ is risen!

Depot Park

On the last of our three beautiful spring days last week, Eli and I headed to a new park. Issaquah's Depot Park is train-themed, and therefore right up Eli's alley! There's an old train depot that's now a museum, and a couple of retired engines and train cars to walk around and look at. Additionally, there's a great train-themed playground. Eli and I brought lunch to the park and had a wonderful picnic by the trains before heading to the playground. I was surprised that he didn't want his picture taken with the trains; I guess it was because they were so big close up. He had a great time looking around though, and tons of fun at the playground. Two of his favorite things were the big curly slide and this really unique (and safe!) swing. My favorite thing was the flowers. We'll definitely be back to this park a lot this summer!

Gymboree

I figure I better get a few posts in while I can. Once Abby arrives I'm sure my posts will be even fewer and far between than they are now!

For the past three months Eli and I have spent our Monday mornings at Gymboree. We signed him up for classes as a Christmas present, and it has been a really great experience! We only have a couple more weeks, as we'll be done at the end of April, but Eli has really enjoyed it! The Gymboree play equipment is great, and the classes are theme-based. For example, last week the theme was "Around Town," so the equipment was set up to recreate a town with a park, a library, a bank, etc. The 45-minute class engages the kids' imaginations and incorporates lots of different physical activities as the kids pretend to check out and return books at the library, stock the shelves at the video store, play at the park, visit the bank, etc. Each theme is two weeks long, and then they completely change around the equipment so that it's really a totally different environment the next week. They do a really great job. Classes always end with parachute and bubble play, which they somehow manage to incorporate into the theme every time (last week it was a car wash). We're definitely going to miss Gymboree!

Carnival!

Last weekend we were blessed with three absolutely gorgeous spring days! Sunday was over seventy degrees, which was remarkable in and of itself (and made all the more remarkable by the fact that we'd woken up to snow just two days earlier!).

After church we headed straight to Nana and Pa's house to enjoy the sunshine together. There was a little carnival just a half mile from their house, and after a wonderful lunch we headed out for a lovely walk to the carnival. Eli had a great time running in the sunshine and playing games with Nana. One of his favorite games lately is running a few feet ahead of me, then when I catch up telling me with a big grin, "I ran so fast Mama couldn't even catch up!"Once we got to the carnival Eli spent some time just taking in the sights. He had no interest in riding the rides, but lots of interest in watching other kids ride! He seemed to particularly enjoy watching the mini roller coaster - maybe he'll grow up to love them. He was definitely interested in the game section. He found the skee-ball game right away, a favorite because it's "just like the game at Chuck E. Cheese!" After a round of skee-ball, Eli and Nana tried their hand at the water-shooting game (I imagine it probably has an actual name, but I don't know what it is!). Eli won a stuffed purple gorilla, and had a great time doing it. Finally, Dada decided to try his own hand at one of the games. You can't read the sign in this photo, but it says "hoops are not regulation." After missing a shot that really should have made it, Ryan decided that this referred not only to the size of the hoop, but also the shape! We were actually a bit relieved that he missed - you can't quite make out the size of the prizes at this game, but we don't exactly need a four foot tall tiger in our house! We all had a very fun day, and really enjoyed being out in the sun!!

Maternity photos

My good friend Emily, who is an incredibly talented photographer, shot some maternity photos of me in January. Despite her talent, she couldn't do anything about my bad hair day! :) Still, I know I'll always treasure these pre-Abby photos. Here are my favorites... I really wanted a shot of Eli giving Abby a kiss. We had made a little game of it at home, and he loved it. Of course, once we were standing in front of a camera, it was a no-go!

I think this one will probably be framed in Abby's room...

Thanks, Emily!

Blog slacker

I know I haven't been a great blogger lately...for the record, I'm not just being lazy. A few weeks ago, after being sick the entire month of February, I managed to dislocate a rib coughing (yes, really!). Let me tell you, that is a painful injury! Typically they would just pop the rib back into place, instantly relieving the pain. However, because of the location of the rib and its proximity to Abby, they weren't able to do that. I am SO glad to say that the pain has diminished significantly with a combination of medication, physical therapy, and acupuncture. (Side-note, a huge THANK YOU to Joe, a good friend of ours and an amazing Physical Therapist, for all of your help). I have my third acupuncture appointment on Thursday, and the acupuncturist is confident that I'll be pain free after that treatment. I sure hope he's right! So, all that to say sorry for the lack of posting recently. Of course, I can't make any promises that I'll do much better over the next couple of weeks/months!

Zoo day!

With all the sunshine we've been enjoying and Ryan's new freedom on Saturdays with basketball season being over, we had to head to the zoo! Just the day before we went, a new monkey escaped from its exhibit. Fortunately Eli was content playing with the "pretend monkeys" that greet visitors at the entrance! It was a really great day together as a family. Eli had a really fantastic day, due in part to the fact that we've been home-bound with nasty colds most of the month. We also spent some time exploring parts of the zoo we haven't really spent time in before, which was a lot of fun. Eli's two new favorite areas are the Habitat Discovery Loop and the Zoomazium. The HDL is a really cool little trail through a wooded area where they've created kid-sized versions of various animal habitats. There's a bird's nest, turtle shells, burrows, spider webs, etc. that kids can climb in, around, on, and through. There are also a couple of slides...I'm assuming these are just for fun, and not some animal's actual living quarters! :) We also hit the Zoomazium, the zoo's indoor play area for little ones. Eli found an even bigger slide here, and spent the rest of our visit climbing up the "boulder" to slide down this fast, curvy slide. He had a blast! As usual, one of the highlights of Eli's day was "riding on Dada" - he didn't stop saying "wheee!" from the Zoomazium (at the back of the zoo) all the way to the car. He was also delighted to see the peacock on our way out; he remembered seeing it on our way in during our last visit to the zoo and had been looking for it throughout our visit.

Hooray for sunshine, family time, and the zoo!