April 2012 Events and Non-Events

Ryan is pretty fast at sorting by color, counting, and graphing (help with graphing) when it means eating jellybeans is the final step of the process.

And there he is, eating away.

Ryan and Justin's graphs in the window.

Easter egg covered with stickers hanging from fan on patio.

Cardboard ovals covered with foil and tissue paper squares.  Not exactly like the samples I saw online, but fun for the boys.

Scholastic tadpole book on a pocket chart.  Ryan can sequence the pictures and Justin can do the words.  Of course Justin often likes to change them around to make them "funny" in his opinion at least.

Our Easter eggs made out of glue covered yarn wrapped over balloons.  Yeah, they looked different on Pinterest and just about every other place I saw them online.  Justin didn't want to touch the sticky yarn and Ryan only wanted to put his hands in the glue.  Sigh.

Mine turned out a bit better, but it looks like a ball instead of an egg.  I thought that the water balloon looked egg shaped.  Guess I was wrong.  Oh well.

We made Easter bunnies and filled with cookies and/or stickers to give to friends.

Our Easter eggs.  I love the brown one on the back row.  Yep, after all the time Ryan spent on the egg he was able to dye the brown egg brown.

Ryan has his Easter Bunny shades on to help him find the hidden eggs.

Justin's basket is full and he is ready to find out what is in the eggs.

After getting his stuff out of the basket, Ryan donned an Easter bonnet.  Very attractive, Ryan.

We got a huge bag of lemons from a friend.  In addition to lemonade and lemon bread, we did some lemon science experiments. We also made some household cleaners from lemons.  Next up, lemon bars and lemon meringue pie.

Playing on the playground at the petting zoo.  Ryan is the faster, braver climber.

We had a wonderful vacation in Cape Town, South Africa.  More about that on the other blog.

We filled bowls with baking soda and used droppers to put in dyed vinegar.  The boys LOVED it.

April 2011

 Here are some of the ways we kept the boys busy in April.


 Our family decided to go walk around the Parliment Gardens for awhile one afternoon.  It has a lot of nice grass for the boys to run around on.

The Windhoek church as seen from Parliment Gardens.

Parliament Gardens

Justin at Parliment Gardens

Ryan at Parliment Gardens.

 Easter fun for the boys.  We made rabbit cookies like we did last year.  The boys love the ones they get to frost, decorate, and, of course, eat. :)  We dyed eggs.  I remembered that I didn't let Justin use real dye when he was two years old. Oops.  Next year Ryan will be too old to fool with plain water.  Oh well.  They had fun.  Egg hunts kept the boys busy for hours.  After the real one they enjoyed hiding the eggs themselves and then finding them or having me find them.

Ryan frosting and decorating his cookie.







Justin finishing his cookie.



Justin dying eggs (and himself).

Ryan contemplating how to make his next mess.



Justin hunting for the eggs hidden in our yard.



The boys loved hiding the eggs and then finding them again.



The boys started swimmng lessons the end of April.  Emil is a very patient teacher.

The boys play with a variety of toys.  They are pretty creative.  They LOVE Imaginext and blocks among other things.

I started adding some variety to our MANY egg hunts by putting instructions inside of them.  Sometimes I would put in sight words or letters of the alphabet instead.


We wanted to go to walk around Avis Dam, but when we got to the road leading up to it, we found it covered in water.  We saw a man get out of his SUV and walk through the water to test the depth.  It went up to at least his knees.  We opted to skip the dam and go to the petting zoo instead.  The boys had fun playing with the playground equipment.



Easter bunnies made out of envelopes. We filled them with rabbit shaped sugar cookies and gave to friends. Top row, made by Justin. Bottom row, made by Ryan.

Of course we also had our trip to Etosha. :)