Easter Fun

Another fun Easter Extravaganza at Rancho Holmes' this weekend. We started with the egg hunt. 60 plastic eggs filled with all kinds of goodies with some quarters and dollars thrown in. Each kid gets assigned their own number and they're off!

Daniel making good progress:

Collin quickly movin to the next hidey-hole:

A lot of the eggs were in obvious places. Athena, you are getting warmer, warmer....oh you are hot!

The kids kept walking past eggs that were hidden in plain sight so Mr. H jumped in with some clues:

The boys with Grandma Lucy and the booty:

Then it was on to the treasure hunt to find the baskets. I made a treasure map with clues to find the hidden eggs. Each of the 6 eggs had a letter inside. Once they found the 6 eggs and the letters they had to unscramble them for the word that would send them to the baskets.

The map is a drawing of the house and each written clue was on the map in the general area where the clue was hidden. They were so funny. The first clue I just drew a picture of lips (in the upper left corner). I have a big arrangement of Tulips there (get it, two lips, tulips?). They needed a little help with it so here's how it went:

Me: What is the picture?

Them: Lips

Me: How many?

Them: Two

Me: What two words did you just say?

Them: Crickets

Me: How many? Them: two. Me: What's the picture? Them: lips. Me: Put the words together.

Them: two lips. Me: Say it again. Them: two lips, two lips, TULIPS! TULIPS! FLOWERS!

Me: YEAH!!!

That got them on a roll and we ended up with the final clue. Except I froze the clue in a block of ice.

Their first thought was to put it in the sink to melt the ice.

That wasn't working so well so Tyler suggested they take it outside and smash it on the driveway.

So how'd that work out?

Oooooh, not so good. But, wait! Let's try that again...

Bingo! Mission accomplished. So now they had all six clues and the six letters. Now what I did not realize when I chose the hiding place (the shower-I needed a large space to fit all the baskets) was that there is another word that you can make out of the letters. SHOWER are the letters. So when the kids put the letters on the counter for some reason they were fixated on the word starting with WH. Here they are:

Here is a close look at the letters:

At this point they had the letters arrange as WHEROS. Both Mr. H and my Mom immediately saw a word that if you just moved the E and O around......OH NO! Stop the presses! Did you get it?? I immediately jumped in and told them IT STARTS WITH AN S!!!!! Whew....ok, so they figured out the word SHOWER and found their baskets:

On to the final event, egg coloring! Pretty Athena:

Creative Collin. He got a telescope for Christmas and has been using the planet Uranus in conversations as often as possible. So here is his egg. We ran out of room so the S is around the corner and we only had room on the front for URANU....you can see the S when you turn the egg:

And the always smiling Daniel:

It was a fabulous day and I'll finish with one last picture. Boys will be boys......magnets....nose....

Oh, It's Easter!

Yes folks it's Easter time! A favorite Holiday at Rancho Holmes'. Baskets and treasure hunts and egg coloring and hiding plastic filled eggs! The growing stash of goodies:

Oh boy, can't wait!

Things

So I buy a lot of the reusable bags from different stores. I end up sending many of them home with people when they need a bag to tote food or stuff home or maybe need a  purse (Patty, but that's another story). I didn't really need one today while I was at Sprouts (I love that store and have one right around the corner...if you don't then you should move near one) but this strawberry one I just had to have:

I was also surprised the other day with a box in the mail from my sis-in-law Patty. I had a little camera tripod on my amazon wish list for Christmas and didn't get it. Lo and behold in the box was my cute little tripod.

Now I couldn't take a picture of it with the camera mounted on it cause well....I just couldn't. But it's really cool and you can place it or attach it anywhere:

How cool is that? It's great in the kitchen now when I am taking pictures while cooking. Before I would have to hold the camera and take the pic with one hand (that was usually covered in food) while my other hand was adding ingredients or stirring. Now I can set it up and just reach over and "snap." No more food particles all over the camera!

She also included a card thanking me for things that I do for her and my nieces. But I think she will have to abstain from sending me thank you gifts because shortly after I got it she was in an accident and I was called to pick her up. Picking her up was not a problem at all but the accident thing......well if that is what comes with a gift...I'm just sayin....

On another note I was with the Grandman the other day. He lost his first tooth!!!

There's the new one...the next one is starting to poke through.....get wiggling!

So we were driving the other day and we heard the Pink song "Pretty Pretty Please" 3 times and we were just belting it out together. Then another song came on that I can't remember but sounded like nails on a chalkboard so I switched the station.

Daniel: "Gram! Why do you want to spend so much time with me when you don't like my music?"

Gram: "But Daniel, I like a lot of your music, do I have to like every song?"

Daniel: "Well, Mommy likes ALL of my music."

How do you argue with that logic?

And when he was getting in my car he slipped and hit his you know whats and said "Awwww, I smashed my tentacles!" I love that little man:

Oh Christmas Tree

I finally put the Christmas tree up today. Inorite? Really? The grandman was here today and for the first time played with the two neighbor kids; Zoli 7 and Maggie 3. Once I got the tree ready to decorate the boys put one or two ornaments on then grabbed a candy cane and were off to other adventures.

Maggie on the other hand was a trooper and helped me until the very last ornament was lovingly placed. She sang "Oh Christmas Tree" and I just melted. Only the first two lines over and over (we don't know the rest of the words like we do Jingle Bells, although we did sing that when we hung the jingly bell ornaments).

She is about as tall as my knee so the branches she could reach on her own were limited. Here is the very bottom branch that she favored. I counted 10 (yes 10) ornaments on this one branch:

And then there are the candy canes....here is the one square foot that just begged for seven candy canes:

We both decided our favorite color balls were the purple ones. And we both really like the snowflake and angel and gingerbread ornaments. Here is the glorious tree all decked out:

 Merry Christmas!

Sundays at the Park

Today was a beautiful day in AZ. It is the reason we live here and suffer through the summers to have these wonderful winters. It was 77 degrees when me and the boys came out of the theater at 12:30 (Megamind) and were headed to the park.

Some climbing: (notice the trademark tongue out the side showing intense concentration)

Some falling:

Some sliding:

Some boys:

A Christmas Wish List

The little grandman was over yesterday. We played some Monopoly Jr and then after dinner he sat and made his Christmas Wish List while I was doing the dishes. The only help he received was how to spell Peyton Manning for the Peyton Manning Jersey at the top of the list. Everything else is pure Daniel.

We were able to decipher much of it but still have a few questions. It is nice to see he is thinking of others on his list. Momy and the bog. I think my favorite is the ping pog tavol.

What is funny is that we went shopping at Penney's yesterday morning and bought him 2 gakit's and some shrt's but they still made the list.

Happy Holidays.

Football and Hail Mary

I like to spend time with my grandson Daniel and nephew Collin. A usual outing is to the park with footballs and scooters, then McDonalds or Burger King (whichever has the best toys in the kid's meal-sorry San Francisco-yes we still allow kid's meals in Arizona) and then finish it off with some frozen yogurt.

So we were throwing the football the other day and Daniel said he wanted to be the quarterback. Here's how the conversation went:

Gram:  "Which quarterback do you want to be?"

Daniel: "Hail Mary"

Gram & Collin: "Huh?"

Daniel: "You know, Hail Mary"

Gram: "Daniel. that's the name of a pass"

Daniel: "No, the quarterback, Hail Mary"

Gram & Collin: "Who does he play for?"

Daniel: "I think the 49ers"

That's why I love playing with these wonderful boys....