The next day we headed up to Racine to the Racine Zoo. Jake and Steph have an annual pass to their zoo which gives them reciprocity to all the WI zoos, so we thought this would be a great place to go. I won’t bore you with lots of animal pics, but you have to check out the gargantuan orangutan and the silly giraffes. I also got a couple of fun pictures of the Hawley boys and Jake’s family all together.

I also got another nice surprise when Kayla, Stephanie’s oldest daughter, asked if I would take her senior pictures. Of course, I was up for the task, and Mike and I immediately discussed where to take her for the shots. Obviously, I had to take her downtown after the fun pictures I got of the girls down there, and how could we not include beautiful Lake Michigan? Kayla is a gorgeous girl, so I didn’t have to do much to get some wonderful pictures of her. I really hope she and her mom are as pleased with the results as I am. You can view all the images in a slideshow here: kayla’s senior picture slideshow.

Jelly Belly time.

Of course, we couldn’t pass up another opportunity to get a picture with the VW Bug. The girls are now avid players of the “Slug Bug” game and call out “SLUG BUG JELLYBEAN” (two times since there are 2 of them) every time we drive by Jelly Belly.

Our trip to downtown Kenosha also included a trolley ride.

And piggyback rides.

Sadie also got lots of cuddles from all the Evans. They aren’t used to being around a kitty that enjoys being held even though they have 2 pet cats, Servo and Magic Marker.

We are so glad the Evans took the time out of their hectic schedule to come see us. It was a great time, and hope they had fun.

As you can clearly see, Mr. Easter Bunny was quite naughty by leaving his bunny tracks everywhere he went. The girls found tracks in the hallway leading to Mimi’s room, at a closet door, going into Annie’s room but turning around when he realized Annie was still awake, and in the piano room. The tricky bunny left surprises in most of the spots where the tracks were.

The Easter Bunny filled the girls’ buckets and left a new one for Violet. Each big girl got the traditional Peeps, some chocolate bunnies, a couple of peanut butter eggs, pretty nail files, a miniature office set, journal, fancy pen, a pair of socks, some elastic headbands, a bunny lovey, and a new pair of swim goggles.

In Violet’s basket was a set of socks, a set of stacking cups, and a little lamby. Violet is reading the packaging of the socks to make sure there are no components not fit for a 7-month-old.

The girls were quite ecstatic about their new goggles. They are testing them out to make sure they’ll work when underwater. The goggles seem to do their job.

It was a thrilling Easter, and all the girls enjoyed every minute of it especially their new loveys.

While waiting for the parents to pack up to go home the girls tried out their new journals while the bunnies watched.

Grandma and the girls had so much fun together over the weekend. The were all very sad to say their final good-byes. However, the good news is that Grandma will be visiting next week while Mom, Dad, and Violet venture off to San Diego.

Thanks for tuning in for the third and final installment of our 2010 Minnesota Easter adventures. If you haven’t already, you can read up on our 1st and 2nd segments.

Each family brought candy/toy-filled eggs to contribute to the hunt. Needless to say, each kid ended up with overflowing buckets of eggs. Anut Sara knew the older kids were kind of feeling too old to play along with the hunt, so she got them each one, large, silver egg that they had to find in very difficult hiding spots. She filled them with more age-appropriate things like a Target gift card and candy.

On with the picture show.

Mike started out the festivities with his annual wearing of the pineapple hat.

The adults wait around the food like hungry wolves (me included). Who can’t resist a feast of poached eggs and hash, pork tenderloin, bacon, fruit, cardamom bread, scrambled eggs, and hot cross buns?

After the celebration meal the kids were ready for the egg hunt. The big kids were in charge of filling and hiding the eggs. They did a wonderful job.

Here’s Maya thinking about where to search next.

Owen can’t decide if he wants to keep finding eggs or start digging into the eggs he already has.

Annie got pretty greedy and was trying with all her might to balance as many eggs on top of her already overflowing basket.

Mimi was very focused on finding eggs so much so that she would not smile at me for even a second.

The girls were so excited to see what was inside the eggs. They ended up with a LOT of candy and other fun stuff like jewelry, stickers, and shrinky-dink figurines.

Violet was just glad to be held by Grandma during the egg hunt.

I wanted to get a nice family picture since the girls were all dressed up in their Matilda Jane clothing. I also had on some MJ apparel.

We hope everyone had a lovely Easter! Check back tomorrow for another post about you guessed it Easter. I’ll be analyzing the pros and cons of Easter basketdom.

Our time in NC was relaxing and fun. The weather cooperated all week with sunshine and warmth in the high 50’s most of the week. It was a nice break from the snow/wind/cold. My dad wanted me to search for retirement homes for him one day, so Mike decided that day would be a great opportunity to take the girls on the ferry over to Bald Head Island. They rented a golf cart and toured a couple of lighthouses. The girls had lots of stories to tell and shells to show.

On the ferry.

At the lighthouse.

Can you imagine the excitement these little girls had when they got to ride in the golf cart?

A chilly day on the beach.

The house my dad rented was right on the water. It was gorgeous.

The town was all along the water with a quaint downtown within walking distance of the house. We decided one morning to go for some hot cocoa and muffins down at the local coffee shop. Lucy accompanied us. She was made to wait outside, and looked so pathetic as she stood by.

Mimi and Lucy are great buddies.

My dream is to one day have wrap-around porches like this. I have always loved the southern style homes with their large porches.

My dad came well-equipped with Christmas gear including a tree/lights, decorations, stockings, hats, and other stuff. So we felt at home when it was time to open presents.

The girls awoke at about 4 am to open presents, but we made them wait until at least the sun had risen. Finally, at around 7:00 a.m. everyone was up and ready to open presents.

The girls were not thrilled to pose for this picture when all those gifts were just waiting to get torn open.

We had taken the girls a couple of days before Christmas to pick out presents for each other. Mimi gifted Annie with a jewelry box that has a dancing ballerina inside. And Mimi received a pug puppy in a cute purse. She named her Joey in honor of our friend, Matt’s, pet pug with the same name.

All other presents were overshadowed by long-awaited American Girl dolls, Kit Kittredge and Ruthie Smithens. The girls received a few other AG doll accessories like clothes, pet, vet set, etc. and the Kit Kittredge Movie, but the dolls were the big deal for this Christmas.

Of course, we couldn’t forget about Violet. She got some great clothes from Grandpa and lots of fun rattly toys from her stocking.

The adults got some fun gifts, too. Santa got Grandpa a Starbucks thermos and giftcard and a golf pullover from the local golf course. Mike received more hunting gear and new socks. I got a stick vac and a seasons flag pole. My dad wasn’t thrilled about getting me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, but I told him that’s this is my life and vacuuming is what occupies my mind these days.

Mike and my dad spent a day golfing and another day fishing. Mike set it up to have a fishing guide take the guys out one day for in-shore fishing. It turned out to be a fairly windy/chilly day for it, but the boys survived and came home with lots o’ fish which now sit filleted in our freezer.

We had a really fun Christmas, and I’m glad we decided to make the trip down south. It actually reminded me a lot of my Christmas’ from my youth where we’d usually spend the holidays down in Florida.

Yesterday’s fish.

Today’s catch was a female.

How did we know, you ask? Take a look for yourself.

Enough eggs to fill up a bowl. Just call her fertile Myrtle.

Huge fish means huge filets.

In other news my mom came for a visit this week. She’s in the process of relocating to Chicago, so she did some searching for new digs. The perfect place was found, and she’ll be moving into her new place in the next couple of weeks. The girls are super excited about having their Grandma so close and getting the chance to visit with her more often.

While unpacking the suitcase we finally remembered where we stored Violet during the car trip.

At Jake’s brunch Violet got to meet many of her new relatives and get held a lot. She loved that part. Marissa, Owen, and Maya are enjoying their new relative here.

Matt and Dylan will be celebrating their birthdays this month, so it seemed appropriate to celebrate it while we were all together.

Even Lily the husky greeted her with warm kisses.

According to his mother uncle Jake has always been a fan of babies. Maya seems to have inherited that gene from her daddy. She was funny with me and kept coming up to me to ask who I was. You would think that she would remember me since we’ve spent time together on at least a dozen occasions. I must not be that memorable (sniff, sniff).

As usual Grandma has the magic touch and can put Violet to sleep in mere seconds. On two separate occasions, no less.

It was discovered that the furnace was not operating properly and not generating any heat. It got pretty darn cold on Saturday night, so we pulled out the snuggly, winter suit for Violet to wear to bed. Isn’t she cute? I had a hard time putting her to bed because she was so soft and cuddly in this.

The next night was dinner at Grandma’s house. Mike acquired a few pheasants from a friend, but they needed to be plucked first before freezing. All the cousins were fascinated with the processing of the birds. Paul and Dave helped with the plucking, and the little kids were curious to see the heart. Owen kept his distance though.

Like brother, like brother.

He likes to scare small chidren, too (just kidding, he’s actually a fun uncle).

The girls got ahold of the camera. Mimi’s model pose.

My guess is that this was taken by Mimi just a tad too close or something…hmmm?!? Or were they just in the red light district? And what in the world is going on with Annie’s mouth?!?

On the way out of town we met up with Grandpa Minnesota for lunch. Although it was a short visit it was still nice for the girls to see Grandpa and for Violet to meet him for the first time.

All of us after church.

Of course, we took this opportunity to get a family picture.

As usual, Mike couldn’t take it seriously, and neither could the girls for that matter.

Had to get a nice picture of Jim and Sara since they were all gussied up, too.

Grandma and Violet.

Can you believe this is the same dress that Annie wore for our sealing back when Annie was 15 months old (made by the very talented Auntie Sara)?

Speaking of the wedding. We got all gussied up and had a fun time. The girls got to wear tutus, got complimented a ton, and loved every minute of it. They danced the night away with both Daddy and Grandpa Indiana. It was nice to spend an evening with Grandpa and Joey and Josh. I haven’t seen Joey in years (since my own wedding over 11 years ago), so it was nice to catch up with him and meet his new wife, too. Josh and Erin (his new bride) looked great. We also got to meet their little guy, Keegan. The girls were excited to learn about having a new cousin. They love cousins! Glad we could make the trip and see everyone!

The girls absolutely loved their tutus, but Mimi wasn’t very keen on getting her picture taken in it. Three times were not a charm.

Daddy actually got out on the dance floor to dance a few numbers with his 2 princesses. Of course, I had to document that moment. Can you tell that the girls were in heaven?

We could barely get the girls off the dance floor, even to come eat their cake.

The group shots. Grandpa with our fam and another with Josh, Erin, Joey, Rachel, and us.

Violet got a little lively during the night. She actually got quite fussy for a bit, but once the d.j. starting cranking out some (loud) tunes she went right to sleep.

Erin’s grandmother is also a Violet, so we thought it was appropriate to photograph the 2 Violets together.

Another surprise for us on the way home was that Violet start smiling for real at people. I’ll try to get a for a real smile from her and post a picture soon.

My mom came for a visit for the Labor Day weekend. The girls were really excited about her being here, and Annie did her usual talking of the ear off the whole time. Since my mom’s last visit was during Christmas, she didn’t really get a chance to see Kenosha. On Saturday I decided to give her a bit of a tour. We headed to the downtown area to eat lunch and see the sites. It turns out that there was a vintage car show taking up all the streets of Downtown, but we still enjoyed our time walking around. We decided to take a quick walk at the Farmer’s Market, too, and Mike ended up being there at the same time as us. It was a nice visit with my mom, and I’m glad she finally got to meet Violet.

We took advantage of some the interesting cars at the car show by using them as photo backgrounds.

Of course, I had to get a snap next to the Charger since it’s one of Mike’s favorite cars.

This car looked like a motorized rickshaw.

In other news, this is what I found on the stairs the other day. My guess is that Mimi snuck downstairs to wait for Annie to get home from school and fell asleep in the process.