Egg Hunt

Easter Morning 2011

The Easter came to The McFarland house and sure did leave a mess, thank goodness I didn't find poop on the floor!

Helicopter Egg Drop

A local church was putting on an egg drop for the kids on Saturday.  Jessica, PapaMom and the boys came out to go to it with us.  We got there on time to register and had to wait around an hour for it to begin.  It was at the middle school on the athletic field.  It had rained the night before so you can only imagine how muddy it was.  We met up with Tim, Angie and Chloe and waited for the drop to begin.  The longer we waited the more people showed up.  Finally we heard the helicopter in the distance, it hovered above the field and dropped thousands of plastic Easter eggs.  Once it flew off the horn blew for the kids to begin getting the eggs.  The crowds moved in, we searched the ground, squeezed further into the crowd, searched the ground and......did not find one egg!!  Aiden cried for a good five minutes as kids with baskets full of eggs walked by.  All around kids were crying with empty baskets.  We met back up with Kyle and David who each had found one egg.  They were such good big cousin and gave their eggs to Aiden and Owen.  Next year.....we won't be doing the egg drop.

After reading about the event online I found out the church expected 4,000 kids more than 8,000 showed up.  Add parents to that number and there were A LOT of people there.

Coloring Easter Eggs

I bought a new kit this year to color eggs, it was a tye dye kit and it was horrible!  It was taking forever, one egg at a time, and the colors weren't very bright.  It dawned on me I still had the egg spinner from last year in the basement, so I went down to look for it.  Of course while I was down there Owen spilled the green dye all over the counter, good thing he's so cute.  The boys had a lot more fun with the spinner and the eggs turned out beautiful. 

Christmas Day at PapaMom and Papa's.





It was a Pillow Pets Christmas!!!

Make It, Bake It, Sew It or Grow It 2010

I love this new tradition we started. This was our second year for MI,BI,SI,GI.

The Breakdown:

Uncle Bill had Nana and made her a new Bird House...more like a Bird Condo

Nana had Cheryl {again} and made her some meals and froze them.

*Meat Pie

*Stuffed Peppers

* Chili

* Corn and Barley Soup

Cheryl had Meghan and made her two different wreaths, one for the spring and one made out of pages from a landscape book.

Meghan had Jessica and made her a new scarf, some lavender lotion and danishes

Jessica had Emily and made her homemade cleaning products

*Laundry Soap

*Fabric softner sheet

* Stain remover

Emily had Tony and made a great basket full of homemade pasta, pasta sauce, ravioli, cheese, crackers, and wine.

Tony had Carolyn and made her two cutting boards from maple and walnut. (Those Cutco knoves will love them)

Carolyn had Gary and Billy had Lindsey and combined our gift this year. Billy made me a Bag O' game board complete with a shamrock on the front. Carolyn sewed green and white bean bags for Gary to play with the board. They also had shamrocks sewn of the front and a bonus smaller version for the kids.

Gary had Phil and made him a basket of BBQ items. Spice rubs for chicken, pork and steak along with his 21 Pepper sauce. He also got some homemade pickles, hot pepper rings and raspberry jelly.

Phil had Steve and made him three different kinds of fresh salsa. Mild all the way to Hot!

Lindsey had Bill {again} and made him drink holders to use outside when he plays Bag O'.

Steve had Billy and made him a gong for his yard, complete with stand.

Christmas Morning

What a great Christmas morning! The boys woke up to letters from Santa and lots of toys. The living room still looks like it blew up....wrapping paper and toys everywhere.

Sugar Cookie Houses??

I had some extra best sugar cookie dough in the fridge so the boys and I thought that we would try to make gingerbread sugar cookie houses.  They came out great!!  We get impatient waiting for the royal icing to dry and hold all the pieces together, so this year we used a little hot glue.  We never eat them anyway, right?  The boys had to wait for Gary to get home from work so we could all do it together {I think they asked every 10 minutes when Dad was coming home}.  

Owen's House

Aiden's House

Christmas Tree 2010

Christmas Countdown

It's not the Christmas season if you don't have have a Christmas Countdown Chain! The boys and I glued links together one afternoon and hung them in the bay window. Aiden is sure to rip one every morning, while Owen's may be a few days behind. Aiden quickly counts how many days he has left on his chain and corrects Owen's for him. Next year I think we'll have to do a Birthday Chain as well.

Aiden's 2010 Holiday Concert

Last night was Aiden's school concert, he was so excited to sing.  The class has been practicing since November but Aiden wouldn't tell me what songs they were singing.  All three of the Lion Rooms sang songs together then each class sang a song with their class.  Aiden's class sang Up on A Housetop complete with arm gestures. 

Easter Eggs

I found the greatest thing to color Easter eggs this year at Walmart. It was an egg spinner, and to top it off it was only 5 bucks!! You put the egg in, put a few drops of colored dye on the egg, snap the top on and push the button to spin the egg. It was fantastic, no spilled dye, no splashing, even Owen could do it.

Christmas Morning

Two little boys must have been good this year because Santa sure left a lot of presents. What a fun Christmas this year, both the boys really enjoyed it.
 

Make It, Bake It, Sew It Or Grow It Christmas 2009

This year (well last year) we decided to try something new, instead of exchanging gift cards with each other we were going to try a make it, bake it, sew it or grow it Christmas. It was a blast!

Here is a breakdown of how it went:

Nana had Cheryl and made her wash clothes and two new scarfs

Cheryl had Nana and made her Christmas bulbs and grew here an Amaryllis plant.

Uncle Bill had Gary and made his a wooden chest of drawers for all his "garage stuff"

Gary had Billy and made him a washer toss game

Billy had Steve and made his a photo frame of pictures that spelled out Susalla. All the pictures were of places or things that pertained to his life.

Steve had Emily and made her homemade concord grape wine.

Emily had Tony and also made him a washer toss game...with the help of Billy

Tony had Meghan and made her a giant planter box and filled it with poinsettias

Meghan had Lindsey and made her a raspberry liquor and knitted her a scarf

Lindsey had Uncle Bill and made him mosaic pot and painted him a garden stake

Aunt Carolyn had Jessica and made her a recipe holder filled with her favorite recipes along with some towels she sewed for her wet hair.

Jessica had Aunt Carolyn and panted her a Christmas platter and baked chocolate chip cookies.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we headed over to Papa and PapaMoms. The boys couldn't wait to open their gifts!

The adults opening their gifts...

Annual Cooking Decorating

I have been decorating cookies with my girlfriends since before we had kids. As the kids get bigger and more are added it gets more hectic. This year we decided we would have all the cookies baked and ready to go. The boys had a great time, they got in there did their decorating and were gone again to play in 10 minutes.

Jackie and Alexander
 
Jake was a mad man with the sprinkls
 
Thanks for taking some pictures Brye....it's nice to be in a few!
 
Aiden and Owen going to town...
 

The group of boys is no more...we now have a little princess in the group. Aiden was just in love with Gabby! He helped Brye all day, getting binkies, bottles and toys for her.
The three little monkies jumping on the couch!

Christmas Tree 2009

We decorated the tree a while back (yes it was before Thanksgiving)so I thought I would finally get around to adding the pictures to the blog. Aiden was soooo excited to put the tree up, he knows that Christmas time means his birthday is getting close.




Both the boys helped put ornaments on the tree this year. I have to say that there isn't nearly as many on this year because of a certain little blonde haired boy. Owen likes to go down and rearrange all the ornaments. I have to laugh because the other day we were walking through Target's Christmas section and Owen looked right at me and said, "Uh uh uh no no" while shaking his finger at me. I guess he does hear what I'm telling him, he just chooses not to listen when he's at home.

Trick Or Treat

Trick or Treating with Chloe. I didn't realize my lack of photos until now...they really did Trick or Treat....LOL.