At last! The weather is making a turn for the better. Today is absolutely gorgeous, and we plan to take full advantage of it. The girls insisted on wearing shorts to school today. I made a deal with them that they had to wear long sleeve shirts in order to wear shorts. It was a deal. We venture up to MN for the Easter weekend and really hope to get similar weather up there. Fingers crossed.

Vi is vigorously vivacious to experience her first spring and Easter.

I want to feel sorry for Sadie, but she has legs and could certainly run and hide if she wanted to.

The girls are absolutely smitten with Violet, and Violet the same with the girls. They spent all this morning happily cuddling with each other on the couch. Couldn’t ask for a better moment.

Two unopened bags of plastic Easter eggs used to sit on my kitchen table. Now there is 1 unopened bag of plastic Easter eggs on the table and 1 opened bag of plastic Easter eggs. More importantly, the opened bag of plastic Easter eggs is now 1/3 empty. Can you guess who the culprit of my dilemma may be?

The two bags of plastic Easter eggs. 1 unopened. 1 opened and 2/3 full.

1 missing egg has been discovered.

Another missing egg has been located. And this morning 2 more eggs have been found.

The perpetrator has since moved on to other adventures. This time it’s the removal of a yellow feather from a Mardi Gras mask made by Mimi.

Mimi models her handmade Mardi Gras mask. Notice the lack of a yellow feather.

Annie’s just glad she doesn’t have anything that Sadie desires. Yet.

In order for Mimi to overcome her plight of missing feathers she instead demonstrates her new skill, that of reading. We are actually very surprised that she’s moved to this next step in her education because she’s never been interested in academics. At all. In the least bit. Without much persuasion and arguing and gnashing of teeth and pulling out one’s own hair and giving up and bouts of despair and searching for non-academic sources of success for a non-academic child.

After harassing Mike for the past year and a half I was finally able to convince him to paint our little, half bathroom downstairs. Without paint or decorations I always felt like I was using a gas station restroom when in there. Shiver. The project took all of about 1 hour to complete, so I don’t know why it took us this long to get to it. Do you think I’ll be able to persuade Mike that our other 2 bathrooms absolutely need to be painted?

When Mike and I first decided to upgrade to a “family” vehicle, I vehemently fought to purchase an SUV. Knowing that I would be the sole driver of that vehicle, I just couldn’t imagine giving into the “soccer mom” stereotype of driving a minivan. Fast forward to a few a months ago, and I couldn’t fathom driving anything but a minivan all mommed out to the max. Well, them days are over because we are now the proud owners of a brand, new Chevy Suburban. I was reluctant to purchase such a monster-sized vehicle, but Mike convinced me that it’s necessary for all our road trips with us, 3 kids, and a dog. Mike’s truck is capable of handling all those passengers, but it’s a tight squeeze with the 3 kids in a car seated row in the back. Plus, the dog needed to be in the bed of the truck outside which can get pretty frosty.

I’m feeling very spoiled with this new SUV of ours. If Chevy offers an add-on option, then it’s in our Suburban including leather, heated and cooled seats, remote starter, navigation, DVD player, usb port for iPod (love this), XM Radio (love this even more), rear camera, electric rear door, OnStar, bluetooth, and more. All this luxury was a little intimidating to me at first, but Mike wants me to be very comfortable when we are residents of SD. I got used to the idea pretty quickly, and to say I’m thrilled is an understatement. I seriously want to move into it and play with my dash board all day long.

My new bedroom.

I didn’t think the inside was that much bigger than the vanimal, but I feel like my girls are miles away back there.

In other news, Violet is not a fan of food. Getting her to eat even just 1/8th of a jar of baby food takes what seems like hours. Mike and I wondered the other day if her dorm in college will have the wet nurse option.