Easter Sunday

Continuing on with our Easter traditions, we went to Ryan's house for our Easter brunch and spent some time along the lakefront playing and exploring.  But we started the day with an egg hunt in our yard (courtesy of the Easter bunny's helper, our super sweet neighbor) where William was super excited to find a toy robot!  I made him do a picture on the bricks because I have one from Easter 2014!  No surprise, he has grown up a ton in just two years!

 

 

Ryan was very clever and used the tool box he made in high school (junior high?) shop class as the basket!  They also got out the paw print making kit that Ryan had been gifted at Christmas to make an Ernie paw.  It was a total fail!  They ended up tearing the clay into two pieces and each making an ornament decorated with the dyed Easter egg shells.  Good save!

Easter Saturday

The Saturday of Easter weekend is the traditional end of winter hibernation ritual for our neighborhood.   Chickster was retired after 6 Easters and a new Minecraft-like basket was gifted to the 1st grader.   Since he needed it for the egg hunt, he got his goodies on Saturday:  Encyclopedia Brown book set, Ninjago Lego dragon set, bubbles, and a white board.

 

 

The day turned out to be sunny and beautiful, so the boys played outside for most of the afternoon - enjoying swings, scooters, and Dylan's jeep.  I'm worried when these two have real wheels!

Dancing with the Chicago Celebrities

Seems like to get a date night, we are either attending a charity event or a work party!  This weekend we had the a combination of those: the Deloitte table at a breast cancer charity fundraising event hosted by Arthur Murray Studios.   It was a fun-filled night of local celebrities (mostly TV reporters) and corporate leaders paired with professional dancers in an energetic competition.    

 

 

After the event, we had to take advantage of the fact that we were in the city for the night and went for a drink at Cindy's Rooftop.  We texted our selfie to our neighbor but she apparently wasn't impressed and didn't engage us in witty banter about escaping the suburbs for the night!    On Saturday morning we stuck around in our hotel long enough to watch the green dye spread on the river before I headed to the office and John headed home.  

A Very Special Mystery Reader

Uncle Ryan made a surprise visit to 1B to be the Mystery Reader!  Ryan looked a little frazzled when he got home.  The kids' energy and enthusiasm for guests can be overwhelming for the novice!  William was equal parts shocked and elated to see that the Mystery Reader was his guest.  And since the mystery reader comes for the last 30 minutes of the school day, William got to skip his after school program to come home and play with Uncle Ryan.  They took advantage of the beautiful day and played t-ball and in the sandbox.  I was watching when they first started their ball game and was surprised to see my lefty bat right-handed.   He ended up switching back and forth.   When they described their sand box creation, they said they were trying to replicate their Castaway Cay beach creation from our vacation last year.  A pretty perfect Tuesday!

Library Card and End of Soccer Season

Saturday was the last day of the indoor soccer season.  Not sure if he has any more organized soccer seasons in front of him.  He enjoyed it but I can already see the divide between the "sports" kids and those just playing for fun.  When they play indoors, you also don't get to meet the other parents or kids as easily as at outdoors where you're all in your lawn chairs.  We're switching the coach-pitch baseball for the spring.  

 

William and I went to the library on Sunday to get some choose your own adventure books and looking for the non-fiction reference guides to the Magic Tree House series.  We found one on polar bears.  But the big excitement was applying for his VERY OWN library card!  He was so excited to use it instead of mine to check out his books!