Ish's 1st Egg Hunt

This is the first year we decided to venture out to a public Easter Egg Hunt. We thought it best to avoid the very public very HUGE event going on at a local park today (for fear of poor Ish being trampled by older kids who take this sort of thing WAY too seriously). Instead we hit up our local Shoprite for their 8AM egg hunt event.

What you have to understand about where we live is that no one - and I mean no one - is up and at 'em on the weekends. To call this a sleepy suburb is an understatement. Which is just fine with me - I love getting out and about early so we usually get to have most stores to ourselves on the weekends - including the supermarket. 8AM was perfect timing for us. The parking lot was empty.
When we entered the store the Easter Bunny gave Ish his first treat of the day. A lollipop (that we later had to take away because Ish doesn't know how to handle them yet - he sort of drools and makes things sticky).
In exchange for the treat, Ish allowed me to take a posed shot of him with the bunny.
I was happy that Ish's monkey Easter basket made him so happy.
He made a friend today - Isabella. She took a liking to Ish and even helped him on the hunt later on.
We were directed to the 1-3 year old aisle for the hunt (the kids were separated by age which was a GREAT idea). Once he was given the go signal, he darted through the aisle as he spotted eggs.
Back and forth, back and forth. He had quite the eagle eye today.
Of course I would have preferred if the aisle we were given was not the candy/cereal aisle (I thought Ish would start hoarding all the chocolate), but I was surprised that he stayed focused on just collecting the eggs.
At the end of the hunt Ish and his new friend had overflowing baskets of eggs.
We all gathered at the front of the store for a group picture. See, 5 kids. 4 sets of parents were willing to get up early for the fun. Which made for a nice, organized, calm morning.
As an extra treat, each kid was given a large chocolate bunny to take home.
That made Ish VERY happy!
I held on to the monkey basket on the way home.
Ish was excited to get home to check out his loot!
Once we got home we grabbed his piggy bank and I put out a chocolate bowl.
As we opened each egg we separated the coins from the goodies.
And in the end we wound up with a full bowl of chocolate and about 30 cents (which Ish thinks is a million dollars!!).

Riding his "bike"

Grandma bought Ish this cute little Toy Story motorized "bike" for Ish a few weeks ago and we finally had nice enough weather to give it a test drive last week (I say "bike" because that's what Ish calls it, so I play along).

Matt helped him get steady and told him to press the button to make it go. So he did.
And he headed right for the stone wall!!! Ish has no steering capabilities yet.
But Matt caught him in time and turned him around.
And he was off on his own again!
Everyday Ish has been asking if we can ride the bike when we get home, but we've had cool temps and rain lately so I've had to say no, not today (and it breaks my heart to say no!!). But we have sunshine and temps in the 60s today - so he just may get another shot at being a disaster on wheels tonight!!

Put It In The Books!

My fellow Mets fans know that famous call by Howie Rosen every time the Mets win - he yells out "PUT IT IN THE BOOKS!!!" That's how Saturday felt. It was warm, there was a nice breeze and there was no reason to stay inside all day. So we didn't.

We plopped Ish into his favorite outside spot - his swing.
And Ish insisted that daddy give him "big push"!
So daddy did. Over and over again.
And Rex watched us from inside the porch door.
A few more Saturdays like this and I might actually start to believe in Spring again!!

Bullseye

We headed out to the Danbury Mall last weekend to escape the rain. We like the Danbury Mall because it has a neat little play area in the cafeteria as well as a full-size carousel. When we got there it was lunchtime so we sat and ate our chicken nuggets and watched as the carousel started and stopped. Ish was out of his mind excited at the promise that we would let him ride Bullseye if he ate all his lunch. (Those of you who don't know, Bullseye is Woody's horse from Toy Story).

So after lunch we waited at the ticket booth for our turn to ride.
Ish picked out the horse he wanted.
And he was absolutely giddy waiting for the ride to start.
And every time the horse came back around he would smile and wave at me (of course I couldn't get a decent picture of that, but you get the point).
And bonus for me and Matt - all that horse riding excitement wore Ish out!!!

Shades of Spring

We had snow yesterday. Nothing that accumulated, but still, we had snow. On April 1st. But today we see hope again - the sun is out and I think it's supposed to head into the 50s today. Whoo hoo!! Still not warm enough to go back to the park for some fun, but we hold onto hope that we can get out there again soon.

One day we'll be able to walk out of our house without our jackets on.
We'll get excited for the little slide.
And the medium slide.
And the big slide.
And daddy will help Ish climb the ladders.
And Ish will figure out how to climb onto the slides himself.
We'll cross the wonky bridge.
We'll get excited talking about how we'll be back soon.
And we'll walk home and hope for another warm day to come so that we can do it all over again.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: The BIG Slide

First haul of the season

One of the local churches in the area had their annual Children and Babies Sale today (don't worry, no actual children or babies were for sale). It's sort of the unofficial start to tag sale season here. And even though the temps were just slightly above freezing, we headed out to check out the scene.

I think there was less there this year than year's prior, but we still did okay. Ish is into pretend play lately so I thought he'd love this little house to put his figures/dinosaurs/soldiers/whatever in. It was just a quarter, so I took my chances!
Plus, it folds up nice and small so that's a bonus.
These Melissa & Doug dinosaur magnets were only $2. We have a double-sided easel with a magnetic side that these will work great with.
This is a Melissa & Doug Pizza Party set (I tried to upload this pic 3 times but it still comes in vertical, no idea why!). It was only $4! This set retails for $22 at our local craft store.
I also picked up a few books that I thought Ish would like. The Diego book is also a pretend camera. The Noah's Ark book has pull out puzzle pieces. And Elmo, well, he's just Elmo and that's all Ish cares about!
I also found a brand-new-in-the-box Little Einsteins pirate set for $4. Ish loves Jake & The Neverland Pirates lately so I figured these would be a hit.
And just like I thought - the little house was a hit! He even insisted on taking it up to bed for nap time.
I have a feeling I'll be out of commission for a few prime weeks of tag sale season this year so I'm glad I was able to get out today.