Confetti Through The Years

As I was writing yesterday's Easter post, I couldn't help but scroll through some prior year Easter photos.  This is the fifth year in a row we've smashed confetti eggs and the pictures from it are always some of my favorites!  I have big plans of some day doing a photo gallery of everyone (at least the grandkids, anyway) covered in confetti.  Maybe at my house, maybe at my Mom's.  Gotta find a blank wall somewhere...

Here's a look back from the last five years and all of our confetti fun.  It's crazy how much the kids have all grown - they should all still be babies!!

My oldest nephew, Jett - currently 10 years old and the hardest to catch with confetti in his hair.

My oldest niece, Bren - 7 years old and beautiful everyday, but especially so when covered in colorful dots!

Up next is my nephew Parker - also 7 years old and always timid for my camera.

At 4 years old, Ramer is my youngest nephew and he is silly as can be!

Katie Wynn is 3 this year but it was her first time to really enjoy the confetti!

Technically, this is the second Easter for both Thomas and Lilli Greer, but they both slept through last year's festivities.  Thomas is 22 months and Lilli Greer just turned one!  Thomas was not sure that he liked the confetti on his head and I'm not sure if LG even knew she had some on hers!

And I can't leave out Anna and Wyatt.  They aren't with us for Easter every year but when they are around, they aren't scared of getting confetti-ed!

I didn't realize it until I looked through all the pictures, but each year Katie Wynn and I take a confetti picture together.  Every year until this one, that is.  Dang!  Can't believe I messed up a tradition!

I'm going to have to remember to pick that tradition back up next year.  It's so fun, and kinda sad, to see how much all my favorite little people have grown and changed over the last few years!

Here's one last pic to leave on.  This was taken by Jett the first year we did confetti eggs - not bad for a 5 year old!  (I don't know why it's so tiny.)

The confetti egg trend is starting to catch on, which is great because it makes them available for purchase in more stores!  If you haven't tried them yet, I highly recommend them.  It's the best way to celebrate the risen Lord! 

Easter 2016

Easter is my favorite holiday.  Have I mentioned that before?  That's probably why I have about 300 pictures to whittle down for this post.

We were all pleased to wake up Easter morning to find that the Easter bunny had made a visit to our house.  (I think Katie Wynn was more pleased to know that he was no longer there...)  

The big kids had to leave us before church so the plan was for everyone to be dressed and ready a few minutes early so that we could take some family pictures before they hit the road.  That photo shoot was an epic fail.  This was the best we got.  It was kinda bright out!

I tried to get the little kids up on the porch where it was shaded for some better pictures, but they were so uncooperative.  See?  They're already teaming up against me.

After church, it was family time at my parents' house.  Everyone knows the rules by now - no one gets to change clothes until we attempt some pictures.  "Attempt" being the key word there.  There was a little bit of dabbing and nae-nae-ing going on while I set up the tripod and messed with my camera settings.

Our photoshoot started with the hardest picture of all...all the grandkids.  Another epic fail, mostly thanks to my two littles.  We told Katie Wynn to go stand in front BY Thomas.  She heard go stand in front OF Thomas.  Poor guy can't even be seen thanks to her.

There may have been some stern words about cooperating and possibly even a spanking or two.  As you can tell, it worked really well.  We also took Thomas's paci away and he responded by dabbing.  

Full family photo...the best we could do.

Here are each of my brothers and their families.  

Our family picture is not the worst (no one is crying) but it'd be better if Thomas were looking up.  Oh well.  

These next two photos are so telling of our life right now.  Matt and I smile and put on a good face...

...while just out frame, someone is crying and needing our attention!

I try not to take offense to the cheers that occur when everyone is allowed to go inside and change their clothes.  :)  

Like usual, my Mom prepared a delicious lunch for all of us.  After eating, she brought out the big basket of eggs that she and my Dad had filled with goodies the night before.  We (the six parents) got to guess how many eggs were in the basket.  I was the winner with the closest guess.  I can't remember what I guessed but the total was 280!

Those 280 eggs weren't going to hide themselves so we got to work out in the backyard, and then we turned all seven kids loose! 

I think their favorite part is emptying the eggs and going through all their loot.  Let the sugar rush begin! 

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know the egg hunt is followed by MY favorite part - the cascarones!  They're eggs filled with confetti that we smash on our heads for good luck throughout the year...or just to have lots of fun!

Jett, my oldest nephew, is missing from most of my confetti pictures because he arms himself with eggs and runs!  I did get him once but I had to be sneaky and couldn't have my camera out.  Of course, then I ended up getting chased by him and his cousins until they got me good!  Also, paper confetti sticks in girls' hair much more than it does in boys'.  They just have to give their heads a good shake and it's all gone.

My brother and I got my mom pretty good.

Thomas helped brush all the confetti off Poppy's back and was so proud of himself for helping! :)

Sweet Lilli Greer slept through most of the confetti fun.

I have about 30 takes of the picture below and there is not a single one where all eyes are open and towards the camera.  Amazing.  At some point, the odds should be in my favor, right?

It was a fun, fun afternoon and we were so grateful that the rain held off so we could hunt eggs and play outside.  (I don't think my Mom would be up for confetti eggs in her kitchen, and that would've been a real bummer!)  There was quite a bit of candy consumed by my two kiddos, but thankfully they still napped well when we got home.  Another fun-filled Easter in the books!

February Phone Pics

February seems so long ago that I can barely remember what we did!  I just scrolled through the month's pics and remembered the biggest event of the month...we had carpet installed on the stairs!  You would have thought we bought a new swing set with how excited the kids were and how often they played on it.  I'll take that as a home improvement win!

On a couple occasions, Katie Wynn actually requested to have their picture taken on the stairs.  I won't say no to that!

After snapping this pic, I asked Katie Wynn if she could put her legs together...

Thomas obeyed too and squeezed his together! :)

They couldn't wait to show Wyatt their new "bunk beds."

When we ordered the carpet for the stairs, we also had a piece cut as a runner for our entry hall.  The hallway is so wide that I have been unable to find a rug wide enough (and long enough) for the space.  I wasn't sure if I'd really like having something there or not so we just got the same neutral, nondescript carpet that we used on the stairs.  The kids enjoyed breaking it in over the month too.  :)

Jumping off the step into the living room!

It passes the crawl test!

Listening to the music from their Valentine's cards.

The new carpet is a great place to play with babies.  :)

February was the month of Looooove, and we definitely celebrated.  We sent a homemade Valentine to Granddaddy...

...and then we received a picture of him with the Valentine and Katie Wynn grinned so, so BIG!!!

She was thrilled, too, when she received a thank-you note from Granddaddy in the mail.  Here she is reading it...upside down.

K-dub wore her Valentine pj's 'round the clock.  We couldn't get them off her.  I couldn't resist taking her picture this day...her pink cheeks matched her pink bow.

We had a family dinner at my parents' house.  I can't really remember why but the kids have on Valentine's clothes so maybe it was for that!?  Katie Wynn may be slightly terrified of both of my brothers, but Thomas let my brother Ben hold him (and Ben's daughter Lilli Greer) for a long time!

The cutest boy in a ball cap I've ever seen.  :)

Katie Wynn loves to trace hands, and Thomas will actually be still enough to let her!

Did I mention that Katie Wynn doesn't need a nap anymore?  That's what she tells us anyway.  And then we usually find her like this.

February marked the first time our big girl got to stay up and watch a movie before bed.  We have officially added Mulan to the list of Disney movies we've seen (which puts our total at...four?).  

We made brownies in February, and licked the spoon clean!

We discovered that Thomas LOVES green beans.  This is his reaction to me telling him that, after five helpings, there were no more green beans left to give him.  

Oh, he also found an oatmeal cream pie in my Mom's pantry and told us he likes those too.  He ate the whole thing himself!

Katie Wynn loves taking a bath at Mimi's and Poppy's because she gets to swing in a towel afterwards.

This is what happened when I handed Katie Wynn the parmesan cheese for her pasta but then walked away from the table.  I told Matt to go ahead and put parmesan on the grocery list.

One night, these two stinkers kept making me smell their stinky feet!

Like every other month, I took their picture in new clothes.  Except these weren't clothes that I had made!  I placed a Hanna Andersson order for swimsuits and spring clothes and needed them to try them on to make sure they fit.  I took their pictures so my Mom could see what they got.  Thomas was the funniest little model!  Katie Wynn told me her bikini top was too small because it didn't reach down to her bottoms.

And finally, Matt and I got to get dressed up for a grown-up night out!  We attended a Wine and Cheese party at the country club and scored some things in the silent auction.  I love having him as my date.  :)

Train Trip Details

In case anyone is interested in setting out on their own train adventure, I thought I'd share the details of what we did here.  

Inspiration for the trip came from this blog post that floated around Facebook last fall.  It's written by a guy named Derek Low about how he traveled across the country for just $213.  I sent the link to Matt one day with a message of, "This could be fun..."  We both agreed that it could be fun and left it at that.  Until a few weeks later we were talking and thought, "We should totally do that!" 

Derek's post has great pictures and gives an excellent description of the trip; you should definitely read it.  I mean, really, I just reread it and there's almost no point in me writing this.  His is much better and he has awesome pictures.  

The difference between our trip and the inspiration one was that we did NOT do it for $213.  I'm not sure that we even did one day for that low.  But our goal was to go on an adventure that we'd always remember, not cross the country as cheaply as possible.

We left bright and early on a Wednesday morning, flying out of the Memphis airport, through Minneapolis, and finally landing in San Francisco.  Our flight got in around 2:00 in the afternoon and we didn't board the train until the next morning, so we had the afternoon and evening to sight see.  Read about that in our Day One post.  

From there, we boarded the California Zephyr, a passenger train that runs Amtrak's second longest route.  It travels between Emeryville, CA and Chicago, IL and we rode it that whole distance.  Between those two stations, it made stops at 33 other stations along the way.  Some stops are very short - ten minutes or less - and others are what they call "fresh air breaks" (but really they're more like "smoke breaks" ya know?) and last 25-30 minutes.  We got off at several of those to stretch our legs and wander around the town we were in.  

The trip from CA to IL takes two and a half days.  Our train pulled out from Emeryville at 9:10am on Thursday morning and we got off in Chicago at 2:50pm on Saturday afternoon.  If you make this trip, make sure you like who you're traveling with!  We booked ourselves a bedroom on the Superliner Sleeping Car which could accommodate two people and gave us our own bathroom.  The room had a couch, table, and chair during the day and converted to a full bed and twin bed top bunk for night.  The sleeper car reservation came with three meals on the train per day.  I was under the impression that we would have wifi on the train but we did not.  We had to completely unplug and enjoy the scenery!

When we got off the train in Chicago, we spent 24 hours there sight-seeing before hoping on the next train - the Lake Shore Limited.  This passenger train is smaller and runs from Chicago, IL to Albany, NY.  In Albany, the train splits and part of it (including all the sleeper cars) goes to New York City while the rest of the train goes to Boston, MA.  Since we weren't headed to NYC, we had to give up our bedroom and switch to coach seats in Albany. The Lake Shore Limited is a single level train and in our experience, was a much bumpier ride!  In reality, it was probably  more like what we expected going in to the trip.  If we'd started with it, we might not have thought anything of it.  Too bad we started with the California Zephyr and its smooth gliding!

We boarded the Lake Shore Limited in the evening for a 9:30pm departure.  It was kinda hard to get on right before bedtime.  The only stop we got off for during this trip was when we switched trains in Albany.  That was around 2:00pm the following afternoon and we arrived in Boston (our final destination) around 8:00pm that evening.  It was just under 24 hours for that ride.

We decided to hang around in Boston for an extra day before flying back to Memphis.  In both Chicago and Boston, we had "sea legs" for a couple of hours after getting off the trains.  And our hotel beds felt heavenly compared to our train beds!

Here is what our 7 day schedule looked like:

Wednesday: Fly out of Memphis early am, land in San Fran in afternoon, night in hotel
Thursday: Board train in early am, train all day and night
Friday: Train all day and night
Saturday: Train all morning and early afternoon, Chicago in afternoon, night in hotel
Sunday: Chicago all day, board train late evening, night on train
Monday: Train all day, off train in late evening, night in hotel
Tuesday: Boston all day, night in hotel
Wednesday: Fly out of Boston super duper early am, home by lunch time, night in our own bed

Overall, it was a really fun adventure for us and we are SO glad we did it!  It definitely is not for everyone, though.  There's lots of sitting still and entertaining yourself.  Surprisingly, we did not read our books as much as we thought we would.  It was just so fun to watch out the window.  Going into the trip, I figured we would leave our room for breakfast, spend the bulk of the day in the sight-seeing car and then return to our room in the late afternoon or evening.  In reality, the two times we went to the sight-seeing car, there were no available seats, but our room was much quieter and had cleaner windows anyway.  We spent all of our time with the exception of some meals in our room.

The food was good.  Not great, but definitely not bad.  In total, we had two breakfasts, two lunches, and one dinner in the dining car.  We bought one lunch from the cafe that was in the lounge car.  We skipped a breakfast and a lunch and were able to eat one dinner out in Denver.  The food is decent but the menu is VERY limited.  Like, only four items for lunch: an entree salad, veggie burger, beef burger, or pork shanks.  I had the beef cheeseburger twice and it wasn't bad, I just really didn't want to have to eat it another day in a row.  

Even though we had a shower in our room, we used the larger shower stall in the downstairs of our car.  It was actually a pretty decent shower - nice water pressure and really hot water!  We had several outlets in our room so I was able to dry my hair (and we could charge our phones).  The toilet and sink in our bedroom were very similar to those in an airplane.

I think that covers all the highlights of train travel and our cross-country adventure!  If there's anything I've left out or if you have questions, leave a comment and I'll respond!

Train Trip: Day Seven

Day seven, our final day of this adventure, was spent in Boston, or beantown, as Matt tells me it's called. 

We had good intentions of spending the day hopping on and off of a city bus tour so we could see as much as possible, but we ended up sleeping way later than we meant to! It was 11:00 before we were ready to start exploring, so we just set out on our own. 

My first picture was of Boston Common where they had apparently drained the water from the lake. I'm not sure if that's common or not. (See what I did there?  Punny.)

We wandered down Newberry Street and windowshopped and saw some old churches. 

Is it just me, or does this church look like maybe it caught on fire one day?  A little ashy up top?

With the exception of brunch in the Hancock Tower, we did not pre-plan anti four meals. For the most part, we walked until we were starving and then just looked around at what was close by and quick. For lunch in Boston, that meant sushi. Not pictured is a whole plate of nigeri. 

Then we had to walk off all that rice we'd just stuffed ourselves with! 

Strolling through a different section of Boston Common.  

Matt and George. (Washington, that is.) 

I think our kiddos would've loved this little line of ducklings!  

I could not believe how friendly this squirrel was with us. I really think if we'd had food of some kind he would have eaten it straight out of our hands! 

In front of the State House.  

Samuel Adams.  

Getting ready to go into the Faneuil Hall so that we could buy our kids some cheesy souvenirs. We left with two lobster claws that they can pinch each other with. Perfect. 

We quietly tiptoed through King's Chapel Cemetary and I reconfirmed my desire to be cremated. 

This new(ish) memorial was behind the Old North Church. It was blank dog tags hanging for the lives lost from Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS. It was really pretty to hear the tags clink together like a big windchime.

For me, the highlight of the day was seeing the Old North Church. I was completely fascinated by the church and its cubicle-like pew stalls. 

Families bought pew stalls to sit in each Sunday. I told Matt that church would be so much easier if Katie Wynn and Thomas could just play on the floor of a little stall!  

Once a family purchased a stall, they could do whatever they wanted with it. Pew benches weren't even included in the purchase. This one had been fancied up by its owner. I can only imagine how much fun Mom and I would have decorating and redecorating our family's stall!  

We were excited to see that our boy Wesley preached in this church twice back in 1736.

Matt demonstrating how to properly use one of the stalls. :) 

And the only non-selfie picture of us on the trip! We learned that they still have services in this church on Sundays so our next trip to Boston will definitely need to fall on a weekend. I'd love to hear the big organ and see all the chandelier candles lit.  

After leaving the church, I was on a mission to get to the harbor. We took a short cut through Copps Hill Burial Ground only to come to a dead end (no pun intended..) and have to go all the way back through it.  

After finding a different route, we finally made it to the "hahrbeh."

My main purpose of going there was so that I could have these side-by-side pictures from our coast to coast adventure. We started at the San Fransisco Bay and ended at the Boston Harbor! 

Enjoying the view (and resting our tired feet) of Boston from the water side.  

We were on the opposite side of the city so we cabbed it back to our hotel.  We knew if we went to our room we'd crash so we had drinks in the hotel bar until leaving for dinner.

I love a festive drink!  That's thyme sticking out of the top of it (assuming you can figure out which one is mine...).

For dinner, we walked to Legal Sea Foods which I gather is a Boston-area chain?  We felt like we had to have seafood while there!

We were glad this guy was able to join us for dinner.

After clam chowder, salad, lobster, broccoli, and rice, we were stuffed silly!  But you know I can't say no to dessert.  I asked our waitress what the smallest dessert was and she suggested the bon bons.  We ordered three - vanilla, chocolate, and coffee.  They were yummy and the perfect size!  (Pictured after we'd taken a test bite of each one.  Coffee was my favorite.)

We went straight back to our room after dinner because we had a super early morning ahead of us.  Of course, since I needed to go to sleep early, I was wide awake.  I watched the hours go by until our 3:00 alarm clock (2:00 our time) went off.  We had to leave our hotel room by 4:00 to catch our 5:30 flight.  It was an early start to the day but we were back at our own house before noon.  

As much as a fun, memorable adventure we had over the 7 days, we were super excited to get home to these two cuties!  How is it possible that they grew up so much in just a week?!  

I'll be back with the details of our trip in the next post!