Easter 2014--Part 2 (Scroll down for Part 1)

 Claire on Easter morning today! When she woke up the first thing she said was, "Happy Easter!" She was so excited to see all that the Easter bunny had left her. As we got into the car to go to church this morning, we even saw a little bunny nibbling some grass...that Easter bunny must have liked our grass so much that he forgot to make a clean getaway! Claire loved seeing the little bunny, and kept saying, "I love you little bunny, I love you little bunny!" :) She also kept telling the bunny, "Happy Easter!"

 Family Picture at Grandma and Grandpa's Easter Egg Hunt!

 Claire with Grandma and Grandpa Whitley and some of her cousins: Liam and Pierce, and Ansley, Hailey, and Emberly.

 This girl LOVES to hunt Easter eggs! She had the best time carrying her Easter basket around and picking up all the eggs in her "area." She scoured the ground, making sure she got every last egg--then proceeded to open as many as she could before we told her to wait until we got back to Grandma's house. :)

 She did pretty good! This is a shot of all Claire's Easter Egg "loot."

 There were a TON of beautiful bluebonnets in the fields by the Perry Homestead this year. After we hunted Easter eggs, we headed over to the flowers to take some pictures. :)

 This is the lower third part of the bluebonnets. I loved seeing them everywhere! It reminded me of when I was a girl...we took Easter pictures in the bluebonnets here back then, too. :)

 Claire and her daddy in the bluebonnets.

 I absolutely love this picture of Austin and Claire. :) I can hardly believe that my baby girl is about to be a big sister--and I can hardly believe that she is two and half already! Time is flying by...

Me and my sweet girl. Yes, we are looking at the lonely weed in the field of bluebonnet flowers. But it was a very important weed, don't you know--because this weed had a ladybug on it. :) I held the ladybug, and after a little while Claire decided that she would like to hold the ladybug, too. :) So I let it crawl onto her hand...she thought it was pretty neat! At least, she did until it spread its wings and flew up by her face. Then she squealed until it landed on Daddy...and decided she would rather let Daddy keep holding onto it. :) Silly sweetheart. :)

This is our last Easter with just Claire...next year we will have two girls in tow...a 9 month old and a 3.5 year old. Wow! It is hard to believe life could get any better...until it does. I am so grateful to have a resurrected, living Savior who made it possible for me to have a forever family and return to Him again one day. Because He lives, life and everything in it is so much richer...spiritually and physically. I am so happy to celebrate the joyous news that He is Risen...there is no better news in all the world! Happy Easter!

Happy Easter 2014-Part 1

 Yesterday morning we dyed Easter eggs for 2014...and this was the first year that Claire really enjoyed it. :) Meaning she dyed pretty much all the Easter eggs this year. :) But that was more than ok, because Austin and I had so much joy watching her have fun. :)

 There was some neon food coloring at Aldi's (where we shop a lot), so we decided to give it a try this year. It was really neat! It did better than the regular colors we usually use (we just use hot water and vinegar with the food coloring to color eggs). Claire liked trying every color we made: neon pink, blue, green, purple, raspberry, and the regular yellow as well. There were even a couple of eggs we let her take a white crayon to, so they would show up once she dyed them.

 Austin was very patient with Claire as he showed her just what to do. :) The last couple of years I think Claire was just too young to catch on, but she sure wanted to do everything this year! :)

 What a happy life to be a child and have fun. :)

Happy Easter!

Claire Rides Her Tricycle--First Time!

This is Claire's first day to work the pedals all by herself! She was so excited, and kept saying, "Let me show you my tricks!" :) This was right after dinner tonight. I can't believe how well she did! :) She couldn't quite make it work on the carpet since it's harder to pedal there, but the hardwood/tile floors seem to be fine. I just had to post some video! :) Enjoy. :)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

 Here is a picture of Claire that I took today right before laying her down for a nap this afternoon. Her beloved little bunny got a "bath" in the washing machine this morning, and she was so happy that it was all nice and clean! :)

 The reason for the quote as the title...well...it has been a CRAZY week. This sweet girl of mine fell backwards off her scooter on Monday afternoon and got a huge gash on the back of her head from falling onto the fireplace hearth. :( The gash bled like crazy, and let me tell you--even when you know how to treat first aid problems like this, it is WAY different seeing your own child bleeding so much. I held her on my lap in the bathroom to calm her down, and when I saw how much blood there was, all I could think was: "WHAT do I DO??!!!" Of course I grabbed a washrag, wet it, and held it to her head, but I was scared to see my poor baby get hurt like that. :( Of course I tried to get a hold of Austin right away, and when he didn't pick up (especially since he is still at a new job and can't get away as easily), I called my mom at work... "HELP, what do I do?" Thank goodness it was about 4 pm ( the time Momma gets off work) so she was able to come right over to help me. After doing some back-and-forth with Austin on the phone, I took Claire to an Urgent Care by our house. Sure enough ( as I thought), the gash WAS bad enough to need some extra patching up--FOUR staples worth of patching up.

The worst part was the numbing shot they had to give her. :( I guess that Claire is breaking Austin and I in when it comes to the many emergencies  and first aid incidents that come with childhood. Fortunately the scariness for Claire over the incident wore off rather quickly...when asked to show the doctor her boo-boo, Claire held out her finger (that got pinched in the drawer earlier this week). I guess when you can't see a boo-boo, it's just not as bad to a 2 year old (thank goodness). Tomorrow morning I take her back in to get the staples out, so I guess all is well that ends well (just not so great for my nerves). Hopefully we won't have any more incidents like this again any time soon. :)

 On the positive side of the week (the "best of times") :) I discovered my new favorite shower cleaner. The back shower in our house, no matter what we have tried, has a VERY difficult time staying clean. We are talking some SERIOUS scrubbing has had to go into the shower back there on a regular basis to keep it semi-presentable. Austin made a mixture of after-shower spray that works the best out of everything (bleach, typical household cleaners, scrubbing bubbles after-shower spray, magic eraser, we've tried them all), but there is always mildew building up in there...poor air circulation is the hallmark of our back shower, unfortunately. However, there is a cleaning tip that I had seen multiple times of Pinterest that I decided to give a try last night. It works GREAT! This is probably the best cleaner EVER. No joke. And it is super easy to make and use. I combined a dish scrubber from the store with these two ingredients:

And that's it. I combined equal parts Dawn soap and vinegar in the dish wand. With almost NO scrubbing, just basic wiping down with the scrubber at the start of my shower last night, EVERYTHING mildew-y disappeared. No buildup (or serious scrubbing of said buildup) of soap scum, or mildew to be seen. Nothing. Hallelujah for Pinterest pins that work!!! There are a few extremely bad spots that might take a little extra scrubbing every couple of weeks or so, but I will take this method of cleaning any day! :)  And no joke, it took one minute, maybe two minutes tops to use this, and then everything looked clean and fresh! I think I'm in love (sorry, Austin, haha!). :) Thank goodness for the internet these days. :)

Anyways, I'm hoping that the rest of our week goes uneventfully. :) I'm almost 30 weeks now, and am feeling pretty good. I'll have to post a baby bump picture here this weekend. Especially now that we named our little girl! :) Camille is kicking and dancing around right now as I type this. :) Only ten more weeks to go (hopefully!). :) I'm looking forward to meeting this sweet new little girl! :)