The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Egg Hunt

Last Sunday we went to the egg hunt at church and Maxwell had a ball.  We’ve been having egg hunts around the house for about 2 weeks now so he was ready for the real thing!  🙂

Looking cute and Easter-y!

easter

Spencer and I met Robert and Maxwell up at church and all of Maxwell’s Sunday School friends were very interested in checking out the baby!

easter

Luckily big brother Maxwell stepped in to save Spencer!

easter

I don’t think Spencer minded sweet Anne checking him out though!  🙂

easter

It was then time to head over to the hunt which they had moved inside because of the soggy, wet ground.  While waiting, Maxwell got his basket stuck on his head…

easter

I laughed and took another picture before finally helping him get it off!  🙂

easter

Spencer enjoyed the hunt from the comfort of his stroller…

easter

But Maxwell was on a mission…

easter

His goal wasn’t to get as many eggs as possible though…

easter

No, his goal was to get all the ORANGE eggs he could find!  He only wanted those orange ones!

easter

easter

He knows what he likes!  He ended up with a pretty full basket with mostly orange eggs plus a few red and yellow mixed in.  Not a blue or green in sight!  He was even more excited when I showed him the eggs had candy in them!

easter

easter

Even though he looks upset here, he’s actually just smiling through a mouthful of chocolate and trying not to lose any!!

easter

My cute little egg hunters!

easter

Happy Easter!

easter

 

Shaving cream Easter eggs

Last weekend, I tried a new method of dying Easter eggs that sounded like it would be fun for Maxwell.  It was fun…but it didn’t dye the eggs well at all.  Oh well!

These were the instructions:

SHAVING CREAM EGG DYE
1. Spread cheap white shaving cream in a cookie sheet
2. Apply drops of neon food coloring across surface
3. Use toothpicks to swirl colors around
4. Roll the dried, cooled hardboiled eggs in the colorful cream (we used disposable kitchen gloves to reduce the tattoo effect)
5. Allow to set for 3-4 minutes on a paper plate
6. Wipe off shaving cream with paper toweling
7. Rinse! Voila! Beautiful marbleized eggs, done quickly!

Well, not exactly Voila!  Now, I didn’t use the neon food coloring and I think that made the difference.  I just had regular food coloring and I think it just wasn’t enough to really saturate the eggs with color.  I might have used too much shaving cream too – or just needed to use a LOT more food coloring – in order to coat the eggs with enough color to stain them.  No matter though, we still had fun!

dying eggs

dying eggs

dying eggs

dying eggs

dying eggs

dying eggs

dying eggs

Robert did say it was pretty funny to tuck his 2 year old into bed that night smelling like shaving cream!  🙂

One other note – I “boiled” my eggs in the oven and, aside from one cracked one, it worked great.  I put them all in a mini muffin tin and baked them at 325 for 30 minutes and then put them in an ice bath immediately.  Worked like a charm for this project!

Pole dancing at the tot lot

In between the rain last weekend, we made a little stop at the tot lot to get some energy out.  I took a bunch of great pictures but these have to be some of my very favorite pictures ever….you’ll see why!

Maxwell wanted to slide down the pole “like a fireman” so Robert decided to give him a little instruction…

“Grab the pole here, jump with your feet”…

‘tot lot lesson

Maxwell was a quick learner!  I looove the expressions on his face in all these pictures!

tot lot lessons

Robert then tried to teach him how to wrap his legs around so he could slide down…

tot lot lessons

Maxwell thought that was pretty cool!

tot lot lessons

Maxwell LOVED sliding down the pole just like the firemen do. “Do it again!”

Could you just die this picture is so cute?!

tot lot lessons

Just look at his excitement when he lands!  Too much, just too much!

tot lot lessons

tot lot lessons

While Maxwell was doing pretty good, Robert thought he needed a little more instruction.  And what better way to do that than to demonstrate!  🙂

tot lot lessons

Oh yea, that happened.  and I was snapping away as fast as my camera would let me!  🙂

tot lot lessons

Robert didn’t just demonstrate once though – there was a second time too!  My favorite part is Maxwell’s face in all these pictures.  Robert got major cool Dad points for his demonstration!

tot lot lessons

Even Spencer thought it was pretty funny!

spencer tot lot

Way to go, Robert.  Maxwell is lucky to have such a hands-on Dad!!  🙂

Switcheroo!

We did a little switching things around here this weekend.  Maxwell’s room is now Spencer’s and Spencer’s room is now Maxwell’s!  I always wanted to move Maxwell into the other room, I just didn’t do it before Spencer was born for a variety of reasons.  But, now seemed like as good a time as any so we switched the cribs, moved all the toys and books and officially declared Spencer’s old room as Maxwell’s new “big boy room!”  This is definitely the right move for the long run because it’s a bigger room and it has it’s own bathroom.  Now maybe we can finally move all of the Maxwell’s toothbrush stuff out of the hall bath!

You can see pictures of the two rooms here – Spencer’s old room and Maxwell’s old room

We did move Maxwell’s crib into his new room and asked him if he wanted us to make it back into a crib or leave it as a toddler bed like this…

toddler bed

He wanted the toddler bed…until it was time to take a nap.  After explaining to him the rules of a big bed and how he can’t get out unless we come in to get him, he decided he wanted to stick to his crib and sleep sack.  Fine with me!  I’m happy to keep him contained in that bed as long as he wants!  🙂  I didn’t put the bumpers back on the crib though and we put a pillow in there with him instead.  He seems to like that so far.

We also figured out that Maxwell can turn on the light in the room from the crib because it’s right by the door!  ha!  He’ll just have to learn to leave it off or learn to sleep with the lights on I guess!

Spencer seems just fine with his new room and slept all night through in it!  He doesn’t even seem to mind the giant MBB monogram over his window that he’s just going to have to live with for the time being!  🙂  I don’t know how to change it without re-doing the entire window treatment and I’m not going to do that.  I did get him a new “S” pillow for the chair to try to make the room his own!

In addition to the big room switcheroo, we had a jam packed weekend complete with a failed attempt at dying eggs with shaving cream (post to come), a trip to the swings (in between the rainstorms), two dinners out (thank you cooperative boys!), and an Easter egg hunt at church.  Whew…it was busy and fun!

Ready to head to church…

mbb church

Perfectly squeezable…

squeezable cheeks

Love these boys…

boys

See you all tomorrow!

Happy face

Like any 2 year old, Maxwell can be a little whiny and ornery sometimes.  We try really hard to wipe out the whines though and focus on being happy.  Susan also had the great idea to starting throwing away the word “No.”  When Maxwell starts in on his “nooooo” we tell him to take it out of his mouth and throw it away!  He totally does it and thinks it’s funny.  success!  We’ve also starting telling him to put on his happy face when he’s acting a little whiny.  He does give a great happy face!

Life with a toddler is never easy but I think I’ve got it pretty good with this little guy!

Here’s that happy face!

Cheese!

Hope you have a weekend full of happy faces!  🙂