Hoppy Easter

We had a very busy week. We went out of town earlier in the week and stayed at a hotel. The hotel had a pool and a hot tub. Though we were only there for two days, we took advantage of the pool and hot tub each time. Apollo loved going back and forth from the pool to the heat of the hot tub. Lucian had fun too. He even found two other kids playing in the pool on the last night. They all played together. Lucian was amazed that they didn't need a float in the pool. The girl was even doing flips into the pool. It was fun to watch. While we were down there we also checked out some local food places, played in the kids area of the mall, and checked out a local mini golf. All of those things made a fun trip. It was really for Joe's work, but we were able to use the time for fun. The most exciting thing about the whole trip was Lucian losing his first baby tooth! It has been loose for a little while now and his big tooth was starting to pop through. So we knew it would be falling out any day now. We figured he would be eating something and off it would go. That's not what happened, of course. He went to drink a cup of apple juice and his tooth popped right out. He took a sip, turned to me and said "look!" It's official. He's no longer a little baby. (Okay, maybe to me he is.)

After the trip we came home just in time for speech and soccer. He has really been enjoying soccer and even asked me to teach him some more skills. I'm excited to start doing that with him. He had his first game Saturday (yesterday) and pictures for the team. I will hear more about pictures in the next few weeks. I wasn't sure how the games were going to go because they haven't gone over too many things. Luckily, they teach during the games to help the kids understand the positions and stuff. Lucian was awesome. He didn't score any goals, but he definitely killed it. He is a very persistent player and has a lot of spunk. The assistant coach even talked to me after the game about how different he was in the game than practice. I giggled to myself. He apparently has the competitive gene. The team won. I think the score was 7-0. He had fun and was very excited that his team won.

Then we followed that up with an Easter egg hunt with his friends. He had an entire basket full of eggs. Usually we go to hunts and he only gets a few eggs (like the weekend beforehand). He usually gets sad about it because nobody follows the rules and they all push in front of him before the hunt starts. This time he was ecstatic. He had a huge smile. Even his grumpy little brother had fun. The other egg hunt we went to that day was a little crazy. There were tons of people. The boys got a decent amount of eggs. Enough to make them happy at least. We left right away because it was so busy and hot out.

Today we went to the zoo. This was the first time we were able to go to the dolphin show. I'm glad we did. The boys enjoyed it and so did we. Plus it was slightly rainy and the show was inside. Apollo had a hard time sitting through the whole thing. I think he wanted to go swim with the dolphins. He is such a water baby. Next, we ate and played at the zoo playground. Then, I convinced the boys to search for the egg pictures scattered around the zoo. If you find ten of the locations you get a prize. We found a few, played some more, and Joe took Apollo into the aviary. Apollo loved being in with the birds and having birds land on them. Lucian rode his first roller coaster with Daddy while we were there. It was a small one that did two laps. There was one other first timer on as well. Lucian thought it was great and wanted to ride again. The other kid wasn't into it. We collected the last few egg locations from the gardens and turned it in for a prize. Lucian picked out a blue zebra printed egg that had a small cheetah figure in it. We all drove home with smiles. Well, Apollo was sleeping.

After nap time, the boys dyed some eggs. Then I spread out some eggs in the field for them to collect. They got all the eggs and looked through their goodies. This year they had: fruit snacks, some smarties, little stampers, quarters, a pass for 30 minutes on the game pad, bunny crackers, and one fruit pouch. Apollo enjoyed getting stamps all over himself. Lucian was excited to have a 30 minute game pad pass.

We had dinner at a Pho restaurant. It went over pretty well. They were out of broth for udon though, boo. Lucian tried his first sushi tonight: eel cucumber roll. He ate half the roll, minus the cucumber. After that we went to a playground per Lucian's request. We decided to go to a new one we saw the day before. It was a cool older playground. It had metal slides, a merry-go-round, and even see-saws. We tried everything out. The boys favored the merry-go-round. Then we finished the evening with a friendly kickball game with another family that was there. They invited us to play, which was really nice. All the kids were really nice and were impressed by Lucian's ability to chase someone down to get them out. It was mostly the kids playing with Joe and I assisting here and there. Then we finished it off with their dad joining in. It was me and their dad vs the kids. We gave them a run for their money, but they were tough. All in all, it was a good day. We kept pretty busy but did fairly relaxing, enjoyable activities. I was very impressed with Lucian this weekend. He surprised me by trying new things and discovering the he actually enjoyed those things.

Now it's almost time for gardening season! We rented a garden plot this year. Our seeds are ready to be sowed. We pulled out the sidewalk chalk, water table and sprinkler. Lets do this Summer!