On March 8 we did a little celebrating in our house - Mardi Gras! I searched the internet for ideas, and here's what we came up with...
First the kids colored some coloring pages of kings and people in fun masks.
Then they made their own masks! I used small paper plates - cut out the centers to see through - then stapled them together. Popsicle sticks were attached for holding up the masks. I tried to show them how this sort of mask has just one stick, but they both insisted on having two. :-) First they painted their masks...
Then they attached all sorts of feathers, pompoms and glitter!
I should have taken a photo of them holding up their finished masks, standing in front of the wall we decorated with their coloring pages, but alas, I did not.
We rounded out the afternoon with the baking of "king cakes" - but I was too lazy to make REAL king cake so instead we did some cupcake decorating. Here's Courtney with her super sugary creations!
Laissez le bon temps rouler! Or as us non-Cajuns would say, let the good times roll! :-)
Hi there! Yes, I've been terrible about updating this blog! We've done a lot over the past few months, so I'm going to work on getting it all updated here soon. At any rate - I hope you all had a great 4th of July! We had a nice day - a neighborhood kiddie parade in the morning, family over for a cookout in the afternoon and then fireworks in the evening. Here are some photos:
Our Yankee Doodle Cuties getting ready for the parade! Our friends Rachel & Derek (and parents Cindy & Brian) walked the parade with us.
Walking the parade route...
Our cake for the cookout. Carter did ALL of the cutting on the strawberries himself!
Uncle Brad, Aunt Laura & Morgan went with us to the fireworks in Cedar Park. It was really nice! The weather even cooperated, it was decent out and not boiling. Some more photos...
I'll be back very soon with a full round-up of the photos from our holiday activities - but wanted to share just a couple and wish you all a very Happy Easter!
Yup this was how we celebrated St. Patrick's Day this year! The kids start young in the Hickson household. I don't know what's crazier, the 2 yr old drinking Guinness or the big toe chaser she followed it with....?Meanwhile, as all the Courtney shenanigans were going on, Carter just sat at the other end of the table, looking sweet as can be... Ok ok I should probably clarify - Courtney didn't REALLY drink any Guinness! Daddy had the bottle and she kept saying she wanted some, so after he had finished drinking it, he let her hold up the bottle. She may have gotten a drip. I expected her to make a completely revolted face and declare it to be the nastiest thing she had ever tried, but instead she squealed as sweet as can be "I wuv it!!". Yes, we are in trouble...
Our actual St. Patrick's Day "celebration" consisted of Carter deciding he needed to wear a green shirt - and then discovering in his drawer that he actually owns TWO green shirts - so he in fact wore TWO green shirts. We couldn't find a green shirt for Courtney, so instead she wore a My Little Pony shirt with a rainbow on it - the rainbow seemed sorta leprechauny. Or something. I decided we needed a green/Irish-inspired dinner, so I tried something crazy... I actually tried making homemade fish & chips. I bought fresh cod, made beer batter, heated a pot of oil and everything. The result - it wasn't that good and I found deep frying WAY too scary. So that's the first AND last time I'll make fried fish! I also heated some sweet potato fries for the chips (I figure there is orange in the Irish flag, yes?) and then made some green sides - peas, salad with green onions, cucumbers & avocado, and some avocado slices on the kids' plates. But of course their favorite part of dinner - the green frosted cupcakes!
Happy 2010 Everyone!! One of my goals for the new year is to keep up with this blog a little better. Will it happen? We shall see. Will I post too much and you'll get sick of me? We shall see!!
We celebrated the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 with a Rockin' New Year's Eve Party!! Ok, maybe not so rockin'... but we did have fun! Grammy, Papa, Uncle Brad, Aunt Laura, Morgan and our friend Lisa all came over for dinner, which was followed with a little party for the kids before they went off to bed. We bought a bottle of sparkling apple juice and did a New Year's countdown (at about 7pm!).Grammy brought over a box of party hats, necklaces and noise-makers, so that was tons of fun - especially the noise-makers! Uncle Brad, Aunt Laura and sweet baby Morgan, or BeeBeeMorDan as Courtney likes to say. The kids adore their new little cousin!The rest of the evening consisted of playing board games, with a champagne toast at midnight. Carter got to play some Pictureka (the little-kid version!) before heading off to bed, which he loved.It was a fun night!
Well I think Carter has a new favorite holiday. I'm sure it will all change once Christmas/birthday time rolls around again, but for now, he just cannot believe he got to walk around the neighborhood collecting candy! We had a really fun Halloween - I'll show you the photos from last night in this post, and then try to get back here in the near future to share all the fun things we've done leading up to Halloween!
So did you have any doubt about what Carter would want to go as?? Of course, he's Thomas the Tank Engine! Actually, the little smarty, because the hat came with the costume, he pointed out that he's both Thomas *and* Mr. Conductor at the same time. :-)I asked him if he could open his eyes a little wider for a photo... and he did! LOL!Here's our sweet little Dorothy! I wanted to get her to stand & pose for a photo like Carter did, but she wanted none of it. It was mostly because her shoes were bugging her. I already had these hand-me-downs from Rachel, and thought they'd be good enough for one night. Well, they are size 8, and Courtney only wears a 5 and a half. She was not thrilled with how they fit, despite my efforts to stuff the ends with cottonballs!Here's Carter, Daddy and Courtney posing for the camera. I had on a fun witch hat, so we had to find a funny hat for Daddy to wear too!In the wagon, ready to head to the park for the neighborhood Halloween party!Oops, Mommy goofed! The party was 3-5pm - Mommy thought it STARTED at 5! Oh well, we had fun playing at the park instead. The Thomas costume is having a short rest - too hard to seesaw while wearing it. :-)Notice the ruby slippers are officially gone at this point.Finally the trick-or-treating begins. Here's the first house they went to. Carter loved ringing the bells and yelling TRICK OR TREAT as loud as he could. And everyone told Courtney she was the cutest little Dorothy ever. She couldn't figure out why everyone kept calling her Dorothy! :-)Trick-or-treating is finished and we're heading back home. They couldn't wait to dive into that candy!Once we were home, Carter got super excited every time kids came to OUR door to get candy - he'd grab out candy bowl and hand it out to the kids and tell everyone "Happy Halloween!" It was cute. Now I'm faced with the challenge of keeping C &C OUT of the candy they collected - I turn my back for a minute and they have suckers in their mouths! This morning Carter actually tried climbing up on top of the fridge to get at the candy, while I was changing Courtney's diaper. For now it's hiding in the microwave - sssh, don't tell him! :-) I hope you all had a very Happy Halloween!!
Carter did his usual EARLY morning wake-up on Easter. He typically walks out into the livingroom in the morning, sits in a chair and starts calling for me or Daddy. Easter was no different. I went out there and we laid down together on the couch for a while. It wasn't until MUCH later that he realized that there were some goodies for him and Courtney sitting on the table! I had also hung a "Happy Easter" banner up across the window, next to the table. Carter said "What's that snake with letters on it?". Silly boy. So here's Carter with his goodies - he was very happy about the candy.Courtney was most interested in the grass.Eventually Courtney realized there was a new stuffed bunny in her basket. She loves stuffed animals, and especially bunnies! Here she is with her brown bunny she always sleeps with, as well as her new pink bunny and a tiny white bunny that was inside the egg in her basket. Carter and Daddy put together a little puzzle the Easter Bunny left in Carter's basket.I didn't think to take any photos (darn it!) but later in the day we had dinner with Aunt Laura, Uncle Brad, Uncle Jon and the other "uncles" Scott and Joe. Carter ate his hard boiled eggs he had colored the day before for both breakfast and dinner! He now loves them - we'll see if he loves boiled eggs in the future when they haven't been dyed! Overall we had a nice Easter - I hope you did too!
This morning was the annual egg "hunt" in our neighborhood. I say "hunt", because at this age it's just a bunch of eggs in a field, and a free-for-all for the kids to pick them up and put them in their baskets.Carter getting ready to collect eggs.Courtney had a lot of fun picking up eggs.I love her sweet Easter dress this year!She was off and running - most of the time away from the eggs, and kept having to get re-directed!The kids also got to meet the Easter Bunny!! Courtney loves bunnies, so this was very exciting. And Carter actually posed with him, an improvement over last year. Notice there's a real bunny in the Easter Bunny's lap, too! Courtney was pretty preoccupied by it!There was also a little petting zoo set up for the kids.Once we were back home, Carter decorated some eggs! In this photo he's waiting for the little color tablet to dissolve.Carter was so careful picking the eggs up out of the color and putting them in the carton.He was very proud of his finished eggs!Have a wonderful Easter weekend, I'll be back tomorrow with more photos!
Welcome to our blog! Mommy is going to do her best to keep this updated on a regular basis, so come back often! And leave us some comments, we'd love to hear what you think of our posts!
