Oh happy spring!

The trees are budding and the flowers are blooming...spring is on its way!  After a really, really rough winter (that's sarcasm there for you Americans that have had to deal with an eternally long, cold, snowy winter), we are happy for warmer temps and beautiful blooms. 

With spring comes Easter and even though it's still a few weeks away, we were ready for some Easter fun.  We cleared out the easter egg basket of all the plastic egg shells that we've been playing with (and I've been picking up off the floor practically everyday) for the last year in anticipation of new eggs to hunt down.  The egg hunt was put on by the local women's club I've involved with.  Last year, the weather for the event could not have been any worse: that awful cold, wind and rain that chills you to the bone.  Thankfully, this year was not a repeat.  While it was again chilly and a bit windy and there was a brief hail storm during the middle of the activities, there was no rain (thank you, Lord!) and the sun made a few occasional appearances.  

And she's off!

I kept telling Ashton all week if she would start walking she could go hunt down an egg too, but she paid no attention to my advice

Easter egg hunting wasn't the only activity they had going on.  There was a clown playing music, making balloon animals and doing tricks.  However, neither of the girls were too keen on seeing him so we stayed away.  Instead Olivia hit up the face painting and Ashton met the Easter bunny.

She was so proud of the butterfly on her face

Fascinated with the Bunny's tail

Not fascinated with the Bunny's face.  She actually did sorta ok on his lap for about 5 seconds. But then 

he growled (?????) at her and that was the end of that

But an egg can make it all better...

Loving all the spring flowers.  The Brits certainly know how to grow beautiful gardens!

There was a playground right at the park where the egg hunt was so of course, we couldn't leave without letting the girls play around for a little bit. 

A week or two ago, we had a proper (am I starting to sound British??) spring day.  Absolutely beautiful.  So we threw off our jackets and coats in favor of short sleeves and went out to our back garden to play.  Since the girls were still in their matching dresses from church that morning, I couldn't resist pulling out the camera to get a few pictures of them.  Here are my favorites:

Who can resist a grin like this?!?!

What you can't see in this picture of Olivia is all the hip shaking.  She was working it!

And then she was 1...

Where, oh where, has the last year gone??  How can my baby be 1 year old already??  I snap my fingers and that's how fast this past year since Ashton's arrival into our family has gone.  It really seems like last week that we were hopping into the taxi at the hospital to bring her home.  I'm not ready for Ashton not to be a baby anymore.  I absolutely love having a baby in the house.  Ok...well, I really don't love everything about it.  I'm still recovering from the months of sleep deprivation.  But minus that and the struggle to adjust to the demands of two children, Ashton has been such an incredible blessing to our family.

To celebrate her reaching the milestone of her first birthday (and to celebrate Geoff and I surviving a year with another kid!), we had a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed party.  It was quite the appropriate theme for Ashton as she is a bottomless pit when it comes to food.  For those of you who haven't read the book or don't remember, the caterpillar keeps eating more and more food but is always still hungry!  That's our girl.  Just this morning I took her to a playgroup and when snack time came around, she finished off her big bowl of snacks before snatching away the other kids' bowls to eat their leftovers.  As Geoff joked, maybe we should call her our Hungry Hippo instead!  Anyways, Ashton was a bit clueless that the party was for her but she had fun.  Olivia was so excited for Ashton's birthday and her party.  She talked about it for weeks before the day arrived.  Or maybe she was just excited about the fact that we said she could help Ashton blow out her candle.  Despite the fact that Ashton's birthday was three weeks ago now, I heard Olivia walk into Ashton's room yesterday and say "Good morning, Birthday Girl!".   Guess we're still celebrating. 

The lady who made Olivia's rainbow cake back in September also did Ashton's cake.  She had never done a Hungry Caterpillar cake before my request.  I think it turned out ok.  Alright...maybe more like awesome!  This lady really is amazing at her job.

The clean-up crew

I love how their daddy makes them laugh.  I think he was vacuuming his hand here

Here's a little bit more about what Ashton's up to these days:

- Weight: 19.5 lbs (50th percentile) 

- Height:  Don't know

- She's still not walking or even standing on her own.  She walks around everything holding on and loves to push stuff while walking, but she doesn't have the confidence to do it independently yet.

- She has a few words: Mama, Dada, bye-bye (always accompanied by waving motion) and uh-oh.  She loves to drop stuff on the floor and follow it with "uh-oh".  The majority of this dropping activity occurs in her highchair with food.  Thankfully, she's our vacuum too!  :)

- She enjoys tipping her head back, almost upside down, to make gurgling noises.  

- Oh, she can be dramatic.  I'm already concerned how I'm going to cope when she's 13!  If Olivia gets in her space, it's not enough for her to just cry.  She cries loudly and puts her head on the floor in full dramatic tantrum form.  

- She's such a good sleeper.  Up until after she turned 3 and started preschool, I could count the number of times Olivia slept past 7:30 am on one hand.  When Olivia was Ashton's age, she would wake up each morning between 5:30-6:30 no matter what time we put her to bed the night before.  Ashton almost always sleeps until at least 7:00, usually getting up around 7:30.  And she would probably sleep even later if her sister wasn't already up by then running around being loud.  

- Regularly plays peek-a-boo by holding her hands up over her eyes.  She also likes to hold her hand up by her ear and pretend she has a phone.

- Books are a favorite activity.  By activity, I mean pulling them all off the book shelves in Olivia's room and onto the floor (at which time there is a chorus of "uh-ohs").  She also enjoys reading them.  I'll frequently find her sitting amongst all the books she's just pulled onto the floor with one in her lap, babbling away while she flips the pages.  

- Her eyes just light whenever her daddy gets home from work and she hears his voice.