Spring Break, Part I -- New Hope Easter Egg Hunt

Rides, affordable breakfast and free Easter Egg Hunts sounded like a good idea... Being the South, the Bible Belt, our area has a proliferation of Free Community Easter Egg Hunts.  We kicked off our Spring Break by visiting New Hope's Easter Egg Hunt.  New Hope South is the church that hosts our local Upward Soccer League, so we go to New Hope each Monday and Saturday and had heard about their Easter Egg Hunt.  Unfortunately, our good intentions and excitement didn't make for a happy time.  We tried...

I think the most successful part of the morning was the little ride that we all went on when we arrived, but of course, I hadn't got the camera out of the car in time to catch those smiles.  After the ride, we went inside to wait in the LONG line for breakfast, where the trouble began.  We had to wait a long time for a breakfast that didn't satisfy us, oh well.  Then, each of the Easter Egg Hunts was broken up into age groups.  While this is a great idea, it made for some frustration and impatience on Elijah's part.  He had to wait a long time for his age group.  While Daddy and Elijah headed to the car to read and wait for his turn, Keira and I headed for her hunt.  She only wanted to pick up pink eggs, and then when she found pink eggs, she decided she only wanted four of them.  Which was okay until all of the eggs were collected and she changed her mind.  Fortunately, a dad took pity on us and handed over some of his kid's eggs, which was very sweet.  Keira got pretty frustrated trying unsuccessfully to open her first egg -- it had been taped.

Once I got it open for her her expression changed immediately.

Then, unfortunately, she realized that it wasn't chocolate.  :(



Fortunately, the playground redeemed the lack of chocolate.



Next, it was Elijah's turn to hunt eggs - his hunt was overpopulated with crazy kids, and underpopulated with chocolate.

By the end of Elijah's hunt, Keira had had it.  The hours of waiting, the lack of food, the mass of grumpy humanity and the chocolate disappointment combined to make a couple of unhappy kids.  Ugh.  Well, as I've said, we tried.  As you can imagine, that was our first and last community Easter Egg Hunt this year.

Backyard Springtime Fun

We've enjoyed plenty of beautiful springtime weather, perfect for playing in the backyard.  Once again, this year, we've planted a vegetable garden.  By far, this has been our most successful gardening venture yet.  I've already made over a dozen salads out of our prodigious Romaine Lettuce, we've had a strawberry already and the tomatoes and peppers are almost there.  As usual, especially in the beginning, the kids loved to help water the baby plants.  One evening they even watered the plants after their baths, in their pajamas.

Daddy was full of projects this spring.  Besides organizing, planning and planting our very successful vegetable garden, Scott also made a soccer field in our backyard.  First, Scott invested in soccer goals with some of his gift cards.  Then, he researched the dimensions and shapes for regulation soccer fields, did some math and created a quarter size soccer field using a line striper he'd already purchased for a master's program service project. When Scottie does something, he DOES it!  The results were amazing and Elijah LOVES his soccer field.  Our cerebral boy often prefers spending his hours inside, so we always welcome any outdoor diversions.  This soccer field may be our best outdoor diversion to date.  He will ALWAYS play a game in the backyard if given the opportunity.  Both Scottie and I (and a few Kindergarten friends) have spent plenty of giggly, sweaty hours trying to score goals and outrun our boy.  So fun!

While Elijah adores his new soccer field, Keira spent many hours on her playground and especially enjoyed playing in her sandbox.  Keira always loves playing in the sandbox, but with the warm weather we were able to add buckets of water to the sandy fun and she's play happily, quietly and independently for hours.  I especially loved watching her surrounded by a canopy of Dogwood Flowers.  One day she was talking about what sounded like "puffy flowers."  I couldn't figure out what she was talking about, finally I realized she was saying "puppy flowers."  I had told her about the Dogwood Flowers the day before.  :)  So, here's our girl playing among the "puppy flowers."



Elijah's First Soccer Game

On March 17th, Elijah played in his first soccer game.  Grammie, Babo, Dendi, Bapa, Uncle Jason and Auntie Andrea came out to watch with us and support Elijah in his new adventure.  Before the game, we got Elijah to pose with Colton for a picture.  Colton and Elijah are in the same class, Colton's mom Tammy is the coach and Tammy teaches fifth grade with Scott.  Colton and Elijah have been good friends this year, playing together both in and out of school. 

After posing for the picture, Elijah got in some warm up kicks before they started playing.

Once the game started, Elijah followed the game closely, watching everyone's move and generally trying to learn the rules and get in on the action.  Often he was a few paces from the big group.  Yet, he was very interested in the score and super excited when his team scored and celebrated with Coach Tammy.

Even though, at times he seemed a little intimidated by all the kids and fast paced action, Coach Tammy made sure he had plenty of time with the ball.  She let him kick it in several times when it had been kicked out of bounds.  

While her brother was playing in his first soccer game, Keira enjoyed her time on the sidelines.  Fortunately, she had warmed up to the idea of watching Elijah play soccer.  Our first experiences at practices were less than enjoyable as she didn't like not being able to go play with him, too.  I think her mood was much improved by the addition of an audience and playmates -- the family.  Elijah was also happy to have so many fans coming out to cheer him on.

While Elijah played, Keira spent her time hanging out with her family, drawing on her magnetic board and riding around on Auntie Andrea and my shoulders.  I was especially impressed by her drawing.  That morning she had just figured out how to draw a face, then at the soccer game she added legs to her face and then drew other blobs around her face to represent the rest of the people in our family.

Post Pine Mountain Hike Dinner at Callaway's Country Kitchen

After we hiked back to our car, we were tired, hungry but in a celebratory mood.  The kids and I had survived our first substantial solo hike, we finally started the Pine Mountain Trail from the beginning and earlier in the day Elijah had successfully braved the dentist (not one of his favorite activities.)  We decided to eat where we had parked our car at Callaway's Country Kitchen.  I had eaten there before and knew they had a generally dependable menu of Southern food with beautiful views.  The kids and I had a blast.  Both Elijah and Keira enjoyed coloring their butterfly drawing that came with their kids' menus.  Elijah wanted me to take a photo of their pictures since they left them there to be hung up.

Of course, their favorite part of the meal was dessert -- we all shared a gigantic slice of chocolate cake and ice cream.  Yum!



The wonderful day capped by delicious food combined in the kids to produce some of my favorite recent pictures.  What a fabulous day!

Second Pine Mountain Hike -- Just the Three of Us

With our previous hiking successes, I braved the Pine Mountain trail by myself with both kids.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but we had a marvelous time.  I was amazed and grateful for our magical day.  This time, Elijah begged to start at the beginning of the trail so our first stop was to buy maps and talk to a ranger to get directions.  Elijah was super excited with all the signs that proved that we were starting at the beginning.  He was also enthusiastic about his new Pine Mountain Kids Map.  Elijah insisted that I take a bunch of pictures of the signs including the sign for The Gardens Overlooks, which turned out to be our destination. 

As we did on our first Pine Mountain adventure, we found a snack rock to rest, eat a few munchies and take some pictures.  In some of the photos, you can see that Keira's trademark smile was missing.  In many ways, Keira is a sturdy little girl.  She rarely cries when she falls.  In fact, she even fell onto an ant hill a few months ago and got bit about eight times.  Without even blinking an eye, she calmly brushed off the ants.  Yet, her sturdiness does not extend to loud noises and most bugs.  Unfortunately, on our second Pine Mountain hike, someone was using their saw for the entire duration of our hike.  She was not a fan.  Although, you can see that she felt a little better sitting with me.  She spent the hike cuddled into the sling sometimes covering her ears and generally trying to block out the saw.

Elijah, on the other hand, had a great time on the hike and was generally happy and smiling.  Although, by the end of the hike, he'd had quite enough of posing for pictures. 

As you can see from this last picture, we hiked 1.3 miles on the trail, then we had to hike 1.3 miles back to our car.  As, Elijah told our server at dinner, we hiked two and a half  and one tenth miles (otherwise known as 2.6 miles).   :)