what's wrong with this egg hunt?

Today, some friends and I decided to have a little egg hunt in the park for our kids who are all on spring break.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day, but something about this egg hunt just didn't seem quite right...

Oh, yeah, it's all the snow that is still on the ground!  Hurry up spring, we are (impatiently) waiting for you!

I think the kids had fun anyway, except the three littlest ones who were having troubles walking in the snow!

happy 17 months!

I can't believe my baby is 17 months old today!  I haven't been doing monthly updates since he turned 1, but I wanted to write down a few of the things he is doing lately that I never want to forget!

I wish I could preserve:

~ The cute way he says, "no!"
~ The way he sings (the edited version) of "Locked Out of Heaven"
~The way he growls at us and pats on the floor, and tries to get us to do the same.  Then, when we growl at him and beat on the floor, instead of running away, he runs straight at us!
~The way he counts!  Most of the time it's: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10.
~The way he jumps up and down with both hands above his head and says, "Yay!!"
~The way he puckers up for a kiss.  His pucker is so big it blocks his nostrils (it's a lot cuter than it sounds!)
~The way he climbs on everything!
~The way he asks us to sing "Rock-a-bye Baby" before bed each night
~His chubby cheeks and tummy
~The way he makes everyone else "perform" if we try to get him to.  For instance, if we start asking him, where's your nose, eyes, etc., he will do it once and then go around the room making everyone else perform the same task before he will do any more.
~The sweet hugs he gives his brothers
~The way he throws tantrums!  Not that I like when he throws tantrums, just the way he does it.  He will throw himself on the floor, lying on his tummy, then he says, "Nigh, night!"  (As if I will be so disappointed that he is thinking about going to sleep I might let him have his way!)
~The way he learns new words everyday and surprises me when he uses them.
~The way he remembers things like the name of a shape (star and oval), and points out something different that is a star or oval and names the shape correctly!
~The way he says "color."  It's the same sound you would make by wiggling your tongue quickly from side to side.  He loves to color!

He is such a sweet, fun, smart little boy and I feel so blessed to be his mom!  Now if we could just get that bonkerton to stop screaming at night...

a dream come true: rock & roll edition

Last Wednesday was amazing, memorable, fun, and LOUD!  That's because Bart and I had 2nd row floor seats to the Daughtry concert!!!

Our friends Greta and Adam came with us.  We had dinner at Chipotle before the concert, and it was so much fun to get caught up with them.  It was especially fun because we could not remember the last time we hung out together without being interrupted every five minutes by a child (or two, or six!).  Their seats weren't very close to ours, but we met up at each intermission, which is pretty much the only time you can have a conversation at a concert anyway.

The opening band was called Aranda.  I'd never heard their music before, but they sounded pretty good.  Right away we knew we were in for a fun evening being that close.  At one point while they were performing, Chris Daughtry stood on the side of the stage and was videoing them.  I think he thought no one could see him, but that wasn't the case!  Let me just mention here that I have been a huge fan of Chris Daughtry since his American Idol days!  He is my favorite musical artist, and one of my favorite celebrities.  Greta and I went to his concert 2 1/2 years ago (but our seats weren't this awesome), and to that point it was my favorite concert ever!  So, seeing him so close up was a dream come true!

Isn't this picture awesome?!  If it were a little bit better quality, it could be an official concert poster or something.  I guess I could always have it printed poster-size and hang it in my house.  Yes!  This is how close we were.  Okay, so the camera is zoomed in a little bit, but this camera doesn't have a lot of zoom, so this is basically how close we were.

Here's proof that I was there!  It's also proof that my flyaways, a.k.a. hair regrowth after my crazy post-baby hair loss were there too.  See that platform over my shoulder on the left-hand side of the picture?  Sometimes the band members would come and stand on that platform and then we were really close!  Funny story:  at one point Chris Daughtry came on that platform and was reaching out and touching hands with the fans.  So, I jumped over the front-row seats. Only, the heel of my boots got caught on the top of the chair and it took me a few extra seconds to untangle myself.  So, by the time I got up there, I missed his hand by a few seconds!

This might be my favorite picture!!

At another point in the concert, he was singing directly to me!  I'm not even making it up.  Ask Bart.  It was awesome!

I got some awesome pictures and some fun videos.  Most of the videos are hard to hear though because my camera couldn't handle all the bass and the kick drum.  The songs with lots of bass and drums, just sound like crazy static.
The other band that performed that night was 3 Doors Down.  I'm not a huge fan, and in fact, I didn't think I was going to recognize more than a couple of their songs.  It turned out though, that I recognized lots of their songs, and had just never realized that it was their song.

So another fun story about being so close to the stage.  This guitarist changed his guitar so many times.  But, sometimes he used this LSU one.  LSU and Bart's Florida Gators are huge rivals.  So, at one point when the guitarist looked up, Bart did the Gator Chomp to him, he noticed and shook his head at Bart.  It was fun to be so close that we were interacting with the bands!

At the very end, Chris came back out and sang 3 Doors Down's song, "Kryptonite" with them.  Hence the Superman shirt.  It was one of the best parts of the evening!  And see?  He's looking at me again :)

I seriously had so much fun!  It was nice to be out on a date with Bart that lasted that long, and that didn't consist of a quick dinner and running to Target or Walmart.  The music was good, and loud, and I know I'm going to remember this for a long time!
Also, I'm considering picking up photography again, only specializing in concert photography.  Not because these pictures are perfect, but because it would be fun to go to concerts and be in front of the front row, and be able to take pictures with no heads in the way. Okay, so that's never going to happen.  Maybe I'll just become a groupie!