Easter Weekend (a week late)

I know this is a week late, but I was being lazy about getting all my photos uploaded.  Our Easter celebrating started when Fiona's Godfather, Jeremy, dropped off an Easter basket for her.  She is a pretty spoiled little girl :) 

We continued the celebration with some Easter egg dying at my parents' house on Saturday night.  Fiona thought that it was pretty cool.

Grandma Teri was very brave and was letting her put the eggs in the dye.  Fiona really wanted to put her hands in the dye too, but we thwarted most of her efforts.

I got up super early on Easter morning and went to Mass all by myself.  It was pretty strange not having to keep a busy toddler happy.  It was actually kind of nice to be there alone.  After Church I came home and Nathan and Fiona were dressed in their Easter clothes.  Nathan earned big brownie points for actually dragging himself out of bed and handling breakfast and getting dressed (minus hair accessories) all by himself.

Isn't Miss Fiona cute in her Easter dress?  I love that her and Nathan were so well coordinated.  I didn't even plan it.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a matching maternity shirt.  I still think we make a pretty cute family.

After we snapped a picture we let Fiona find her basket from the Easter bunny.

Digging into her goodies.

So after we explored her basket, we packed up and headed to Nathan's parents' for Easter brunch.

Fiona got another Easter basket at Grandma's house and she was loving the Easter eggs with crackers.

Grandma Cheryl even blew up some balloons to play with.

After we were stuffed full of good food and Nathan was trying to fall asleep in the chair we headed home for a quick nap.  The nap didn't pan out, so we headed on over to my parents' for our second Easter meal.  Fiona got yet another Easter basket over there.  Seriously, she isn't loved at all ;)

Fiona helping herself to a cold drink.

We of course had to change Fiona out of her beautiful Easter dress so that we could hunt eggs and play outside in the sandbox.

Hunting eggs with lots of help from the big cousins.

She managed to collect quite a few eggs, but she wanted to stop and open each one.  I had to be sneaky and swap out all her candy eggs for ones with snacks that she could eat.  She didn't notice.  She just liked opening the eggs and dumping the stuff out.

And of course a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's on a nice day wouldn't be complete without swinging.  You can hear her squealing and giggling across the yard.

Easter was a little chaotic and we were glad to go home and go to bed at the end of the day.  Overall, it was a good day with lots of family and good food.

Our Easter

We had a great Easter, yesterday. It was exhausting, but we had a great day. We started the day by getting dressed and giving Fiona her Easter basket from the Easter bunny. She got a handful of candy, which her Daddy graciously volunteered to eat, a sleeper, a teething toy, and a bear/blanket. She really could have cared less, but she looked absolutely adorable in her Easter dress.


Before we had to run out the door to Church we made a quick attempt at a family photo, which didn't turn out great. We took another one later at Mom and Dad's.


After Church we headed over to my parents' house for a crazy Easter dinner. I was a little worried about how Fiona would handle it because it was officially her first Mulcahy holiday. For those of you who don't know about my family, I am the oldest of 6 kids and my parents are both from families of 5 kids. My Dad's family almost all live in Omaha. Of his 3 siblings in the Omaha area the smallest number of children is 4. Everyone gathers together for the major holidays plus some neighbors/friends/honorary family members. Needless to say this ends up being a lot of people. I think my Mom said the count yesterday was 42. Not only are there a lot of people, but there is a LOT of food. No one ever goes away hungry. If you have ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that in a lot of ways is my family. Also the husband's family is a lot like my in-laws, as far as contrasts go.
So we ate a lot, Fiona got passed around a lot (she did really well and only got a little fussy when she needed a nap), we had lots of fun talking and laughing and hiding eggs for the kids (I won't even begin to explain the probably hundreds of Easter eggs that get hidden and hunted). Fiona did manage to squeeze in about a half hour nap amidst the chaos. Then we packed up while the party was still raging on and headed over to Easter dinner with Nathan's parents.
His family consists of his parents, one sister, and his grandmother. Talk about switching gears. It was a nice break from the noise, and we had a quieter dinner with them, which was very yummy. I did feel awful because I let Fi get a little too tired from earlier so she was kind of a cranky baby. It was my fault and I'll have to be more careful next time, so she doesn't get too tired for round 2. We still had a nice Easter dinner with Nathan's family and his mother hid eggs around the house for Nathan, his sister, and I to hunt. I hadn't been an egg HUNTER in a LONG time. Being the oldest cousin, with LOTS of little ones, I have been an egg HIDER for many years. After that we took our tired/cranky baby home and put her to bed and we followed her shortly after, being exhausted ourselves. It was a good holiday. Now we just need a day off to recover.

And because I think it is funny, here is a video of Fiona talking and doing her dog pant.

Easter

I have always liked Easter. It is spring, which means some years it is nice outside. There is good food to eat and it tends to be a pretty relaxing holiday. Last year on Easter we told all the family that this cute munchkin would be making an appearance around Thanksgiving.

She is modeling a super cute new dress from Great Grandma.


So I decided to take a couple more Easter pictures the other day. Still no bunny ears. I couldn't get any to fit her little head. Still she took a couple of cute pictures. This was at the beginning of a cold so she wasn't patient for too long, hence the pacifier.






I can't wait for Easter to get here. I am excited about Fiona's Easter basket. I think the Easter bunny did a good job filling it.

I am even more excited about her adorable little Easter dress. My Mom whipped it up the other day, matching headband and bloomers too. She is going to look so pretty on Easter.

Easter Pictures, Take One!

So I was inspired by my MOM friend, Megan. She takes such adorable holiday pictures of Big C, which double as great blackmail photos for when he gets older. Anyway, the pictures are so super cute, I decided that I needed to take some holiday pictures of my peanut. What better holiday to start with than Easter. It just so happened that I had a giant basket from a baby shower and some platic eggs, so what the heck, I decided to try my hand at it.

I figured this would just be a practice session. So I tried out some different backgrounds and things. Fiona was even more cooperative than I thought she would be, at least at the very beginning,

What a cute Easter treat!

I wanted to put some little bunny ears on her. I even had 2 pairs of them. One pair was giant and wouldn't stay on. The other pair was tiny and too small. So no bunny ears. I think I can operate on the smaller pair and get them to work if I have the time and patience for a second photo shoot.

So then I decided it would be way cuter if she was naked (well, mostly naked, she had a diaper on because that is one mess I don't want to think about cleaning up).

As you can probably tell, she was getting more and more fed up with me. However, I didn't let that stop me.

So the pictures are okay for a first attempt. I need to try it in a different spot in the house because the lighting was not the best. I think it was a successful practice session and maybe I will get the energy to do a "take two" with some better lighting and some bunny ears. Either way the baby in the basket is the prettiest little girl I've ever seen.

If you haven't seen her pictures of Big C as the Easter bunny, you should go take a peek. He makes a cute baby in a basket as well. At just one month older he is almost double Fiona's weight. His mom has hired him out as Fiona's body guard, so no bullies will be messing with my baby.