Happy Mothers Day

Today of all days it seemed a never ending echo of my son calling me, and at times for no real apparent reason. Reminded me of this funny video posted by one of my friends. Enjoy!

Ava “MJ” Vanegas

Yes, little Ava constantly has her tongue hanging out like Michael Jordan flying in for a dunk. She’s a girl with a lot of facial expression and full of personality. We’ve already learned this girl is going to be a tough little cookie. She’s already taken some rough tumbles, all in her quest to explore the unknown, and usually just rolls over and moves on. If the fall is particularly hard and I run over to swoop her up to console her she just pushes me away and wants to get back to what she was doing. She’s also quite persistent at getting what she wants. Today I was watching her trying to get something out of our overfilled ball bin. She kept tugging on the bin until it fell over on top of her. I waited patiently to see her reaction and she just pushed herself back up, found what she wanted and crawled away. Made me laugh.

Easter

Easter fun always includes our ward Easter party. Face painting, cookie decorating, egg hunt and more! Ethan has talked about this since last Easter. He’s always asking, “When do I get my face painted at church again.” I’m so happy to know that this is his most memorable church experience. J Anyway, we were lucky to enjoy some beautiful spring weather so we rode our bikes to the church house with the kids in the chariot, which I must say has been a lot of fun with the kids to be able to take them on runs and go on bike rides.

This year Ethan chose a little yellow chick for one cheek and a motorcycle for the other cheek.

Ethan was able to get plenty of eggs for his bag. Our ward had about 3000 eggs and about 130 kids.

So it was nice and easy for the younger kiddos to fill their bags.

As usual with face painting, Ethan did all he could to try and get out of face washes and baths to allow the art to linger longer. Here he's showing off his motorcycle. His little chick rubbed off during a nap on the ride home. He was quite disappointed about that!

I had to work Eater Sunday so Jairo had the job of getting the kids into their Easter outfits and taking pictures. As you can see the photos were an after thought as he only captured Ava in her dress. On Easter Ethan and Dad dyed eggs, played spelling games with pretzels (dad is much more creative than mom) and ate fun Easter candy.

Jairo remembered to get the picture after Ethan had already changed. So we have the Easter wrestling photo. Lovely!

Ethan enjoying the eggs after dying them.

Doing spelling games with pretzels.

Enjoying candy as you can see. This year the East bunny brought some Sees chocolate Easter eggs that are hollow and when you break into them there is a little yellow chocolate chick inside.

While it may seem Easter is all-commercial, we did take time to remember the sacrifice of our Savior. We are grateful for this time of year that we can give more focus and attention to remember the love of our Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ.

Ava at 6 months

Little Ava is such a sweet smiley girl! She just turned 6 months and weighs 14 lbs 6 oz and is 25.5 inches tall. She's quite petite compared to Ethan at this age. She rolls and scoots around and makes many attempts at crawling. She can almost push herself up to sitting on her own and still adores her brother who keeps her attention and makes her smile!

Going Green for St. Patrick's?

(Ethan before he discovered I was taking a picture)

Ethan had a rough evening the other day and I had to take some pictures because, while I was upset, it was kind of funny. I guess he had a little too much time to himself while I was trying to get dinner prepared and attend to Ava. I was starting dinner when I noticed things were hauntingly silent in the other room where Ethan was supposed to be playing. As most parents know, unless kids are sleeping, silence usually is not good. When I walked in he was happily coloring himself. I told him I was taking pictures to show Dad what kind of trouble he had gotten into. He decided he’d better wash things off, but wanted to do it himself. I got back to cooking dinner only to have him come into the kitchen with his hair full of soap. I told him he was only supposed to be washing his hands and face, not his hair. He thought it was fun and wanted to continue, even with my warnings that if he gets the soap in his eyes it would burn. Still, he wanted to do things on his own. As predicted, he was soon crying as the soap was dripping into his eyes, so I came to help finish the job. I tried to get back to dinner, but now Ava needed attention so I sat down to feed her. Next thing I hear Ethan saying what a good hot dog I was making. I told him to leave things alone in the kitchen and when I returned I found a lovely little Ethan bite taken out of my sausage with a little green fingerprint to go along with it. We obviously missed some of the marker on his hands.

(Ethan after he realized I was taking pictures. I can just read his mind ... Oh no! She caught me.)

(Ethan after I told him to show what he had done cause when dad comes home ... )

(Ethan washing his hair as well and as you can see, getting soap in his eyes ... I tried to help)

(This is a bit blurry, but it cracks me up. As you might guess, this is after soap in the eyes)

(The chunk Ethan took out of the sausage I was getting ready to cook ... and that's not mold next to the bite, it's a green finger print indicating the culprit)