Easter Pictures

Here in Sitka, you only get one shot with the Easter bunny.  We don't have a mall that he hangs out at for weeks before Easter, instead he's at the rainy day bazaar for a few hours and that's it.  This year, I didn't worry too much about when the Easter bunny was going to be here, mostly because of the Santa Clause fiasco we endured this past Christmas.  So instead of getting pictures with the Easter bunny, we had a mini Easter photo shoot with our photographer.  It was beautiful and sunny one day last week so we went to the park and found an open spot by the water.

I love these little photo shoots and in some ways they are the easiest to do, for me anyways.  Probably not so much for the photographer.  We just let Brinleigh wander and explore and  as much as we try to get her to do specific things or look at the camera, she just ignores us.

Ashley Ann Photography

Easter 2014

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend!  Saturday was spent prepping for Easter dinner, cleaning the house, boiling eggs and making a three layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  Go big or go home, right?  We put the ham in the oven when we woke up Sunday morning and after breakfast we opened our Easter baskets.  Sunday afternoon we had our usual group of friends over for our normal pot luck style dinner.  Everything was delicious and we were soooo stuffed afterwards.

I have been slacking on the holiday crafts since we all got sick, but I did manage this one piece, haha.

 (Decorative Glitter Easter Eggs are from Kohls, but now sold out.)

Saturday evening we decided to attempt to color eggs with Brinleigh and it actually went a lot better than I was expecting.  We got through an entire dozen without a single broken egg.  But I will say, I am super thankful for dark furniture.  Brinleigh seemed to enjoy herself and was not happy about the egg dying session being over, but she was so proud of her colored eggs.

I probably went a little overboard on Brinleigh's Easter basket but I was proud of how well it turned out.  I will continue to make it a goal to avoid candy as much as possible so I'm gonna have to work on becoming more creative as she gets older.

Growing up, my mom made my sister and I Easter baskets and Christmas stockings into our adult years and so I've always felt like it was a tradition that I wanted to carry on.  So I made Kolt an Easter basket and he made me one as well.  Kolt's basket had some new ear buds for the gym, a dive knife he wanted, some energy drinks, chocolate covered blueberries and some extra candy.  He got me The Pioneer Woman Cookbook, a car charger cable for my iphone, and a strawberry huller and slicer, all of which were on my amazon wish list.

I was also excited about using Brinleigh's personalized Easter basket liner for the first time since I bought it on sale after Easter last year.

 

 Brinleigh's Easter basket had a bubble wand, stuffed bunny, Fancy Nancy book, Tangled DVD, Thumper book, Minnie Mouse towel, Minnie Mouse feeding set, sunglasses and carrying case, and a few plastic Minnie Mouse eggs with some candy, which Mommy ate.

I think it's safe to say that the sunglasses and the carrying case were by far Brinleigh's favorite part of her basket.  She carries the case around all day with both pairs of her sunglasses or with one pair while she wears the other.  A few months ago I couldn't keep a pair of sunglasses on her for more than two seconds and now she wears them all day, even when she is watching tv.  She also constantly carries around a pink stuffed bunny that Kolt bought for her basket that isn't in the picture.

I used the eggs we dyed on Saturday to make my colored deviled eggs on Sunday and they were Amazing!  I got the idea last Easter from Pinterest, of course, and have decided that this is my new Easter tradition.  I also made some punch using a recipe that I got from one of my coastie wife friends.  She had made it the weekend before for her daughter's first birthday and I thought it was delicious, so of course, I had to try and make it myself.  This was actually my practice run because I want to make it for Brinleigh's birthday party this summer.

Directions for the colored deviled eggs can be found here, but I use my own mayo and mustard combo for the filling.

I spent way too much time on this cake but I was very proud of it.  I just used a couple boxes of carrot cake mix with pre-made cream cheese frosting in the jars.  I baked three separate round 8" layers with frosting in between each layer.  Then I frosted the outside of the entire cake.  For decoration I used a few drops of green food coloring mixed in with some shredded coconut to make some "grass" and then topped the cake with some peeps.  I forgot to take pictures of the finished product on the table, so I only have a picture that I took really quick the night before.

Brinleigh seemed to enjoy the Easter dinner more than she did the Thanksgiving one.  She especially loves the marshmallow fruit salad.

I get so caught up with all the discussions and eating and entertaining that I always forget to take pictures with our friends.  I forgot to have a family Easter picture taken, so we ended up doing a family selfie later on that night.  (Kolt had already changed out of his Easter clothes)

Sickness Sickness, go away!

After two weeks, I think I can say that the sickness has officially left the house.  Kolt and I are still dealing with a little sinus stuff, but Brinleigh is doing awesome.  Besides a couple minor sniffles, this was Brinleigh's first time being really sick.  And it was absolutely horrible.

She had a low grade fever, stuffed up nose and a terrible cough.  Her cough actually got so bad that she would have what the nurse said was "Bronchial Spasms" where she would literally cough herself into a vomiting fit.  We kept her on a liquid diet for the most part because even trying to eat would launch her into a coughing fit.

There was one night that basically broke down crying.  I was literally at a loss as to what I was supposed to do.  Kolt was at work and Brinleigh had already been sick for several days.  I was giving her baths every night because they relaxed her and I just felt like it was helping to wash some germs away from that day.  I got Brinleigh out of the bath tub and once she was in her pajamas, she went into one of her bronchial spasms.  I could not get her to stop coughing.  And then the vomit came, and just kept coming.  What do you do when your child won't stop throwing up and is coughing at the same time?  So, off went the pajamas, and back into the tub she went.  She calmed down right away and we had to start all over again.  It was absolutely heartbreaking to see her so miserable.  We ended up laying in mine and Kolt's bed watching tv until she passed out for the night.

And who would have thought that such a tiny little person could take down an entire household with a cold?  Never underestimate the germs of a child.  It was brutal.

On day five, Kolt had finally had enough.  He insisted we take Brinleigh to the Emergency Room to check for an ear infection.  As soon as we left the house she immediately seemed better.  Apparently she was just going a little stir crazy and needed to get out.  The doctor we saw in the emergency room did say that she was starting to get an ear infection and prescribed her some antibiotics.  Brinleigh has never had an ear infection so we were so thankful that we caught it early.

  

Out Sick!

Brinleigh caught a horrible cold that is going around right now and when we went to see the doctor they told us it was croup.  Two days later, we made a trip to Urgent Care to find out she had what looked to be the start of her first ear infection.  The following day, Kolt was sick.  The day after that, I was down for the count as well.  Since our entire family is fighting this nasty bug, we are all remaining quarantined to the house.  I'm also working on disinfecting EVERYTHING!!!

I will post more once we've recuperated.