Easter Egg Hunt?

The genius who came up with Easter egg hunts did not live in Massachusetts, I'll bet.  See these flowers?

That was about the extent of our flora the day before Easter.  The rest of the hunt field looked more like this:

Frances still tried, trudging through snow and kiddos.  (Chandler got left at home to nap.)

Frances didn't find much, but we ran into the Linfoots and Darby, bless her, gave Frances some eggs.

And then the kids consumed free ice cream and juice to cool off from the hunt.

What a weird tradition.  Maybe next year will be a bit warmer and Chandler will have given up napping?  Maybe...

One Weird Kid

Chandler likes to keep her shoes on as much as possible, and she's very fond of her purple coat.  So her naps turn out like this:

Chandler is in charge of keeping me not bored.  She does a very good job.

Mimi is here! Mimi is here!

My mom came to visit, mostly to help me tackle my over-flowing basement, but a little of this went on too:

Chandler dear's attention span isn't quite as long as Frances's.

While Mimi was here, we had the first day of Spring - thank the Lord - so Frances and I did our usual first-day-of-Spring-seed-planting.

This year, she chose to plant seeds from a yellow pepper.

After they'd been in the soil for what felt like forever, I read that sometimes seeds from non-organic peppers sometimes won't grow.  I was afraid this was going to be a very disappointing project.  Just as I was giving up hope, two tiny sprouts came up.  Parenting fail avoided!  The plants are doing well now.  No peppers yet, but let's not get greedy.

Twenty-Five Months of Toddler Chandler

This little person does not have homework yet, but if her big sister sits at the table and works, Chandler will give it a try, too.

Twenty-Five Months Fun Facts:

• The Language: Reach, eat, wet and water (although she prefers to refer to water as "gu-ga.")
• The Hair: Better.  Sigh.

Sixty-Four Months of Preschooler Frances

Sixty-Four Months Fun Fact:

• School: Frances is assigned homework this year.  I have mixed feelings about it.  Occasionally, the task is something like, "Go outside with your family."  Okey-dokey.  Sometimes it's more like, "Trace the J's."  Boo-ring.  Most of the time it's somewhere in between.  It doesn't really matter to Frances, though.  She likes it all.  Thank goodness for Frances.  We'll save the homework battles for later.
• Dinner Battles:  Frances voluntarily ate soup!!  And a nice Curry-Chicken-Coconut Milk number at that.  Easy to make; easy to like.  Yay for Frances!

The Little Dears

School wasn't cancelled!  Yay!  After pick-up, I took the kids to the lovely Boston Nature Center.  I think I had fantasies of walking the trails, but the trails were snowed in, of course.  So instead, we sat inside the BNC's lovely classroom and had a snack.

See what a lovely mood Frances was in?

Then I took them home, tout de suite.  It's possible I tried to sell Frances to the gypsies.  No takers.

Hibernating...

...with a little light reading.