Easter fun

We enjoyed a nice, relaxing Easter weekend beginning with Thursday night's big egg-coloring extravaganza. We had our buddies Kellyn, Nasira and Fatima over to help Mason do the honors.

Take a look at all those colors!



All told, the kiddos dyed 36 eggs for us and eight hands! Now I understand why we always had to dye eggs well in advance of Easter Sunday -- so the dye would be gone in time for photos!



Rob and Mason spent Good Friday together, though Mommy had to work. I'll post more about their adventure later.

Easter Sunday doubled as Mommy's birthday this year, and we had a great time. First, Mason awoke to find his wares from the "Christmas" Bunny -- as he kept referring to the Easter Bunny all day long, especially when he was excited. Like Mason said, he got toys, some clothes and LOTS of candy from that Christmas Bunny.



After mass, we headed to brunch at one of our favorite Upper Westside spots, Arte Cafe, and then to Central Park for an egg hunt of our own. The Christmas Bunny was kind enough to leave Mason 25 stuffed eggs to find.



After last year's incident, Mason was worried about other kids swiping his eggs, so we picked a sunny, uninhabited hillside to hide them on. Or so we thought ...

It wasn't other kids who got to them this year, it was a squirrel. Check out the chewed-through egg and the empty candy wrapper.


Mason still had plenty of fun, though we only came home with 22 eggs. The squirrel got a few!



Note to Christmas Bunny: Stop bringing shorts! Two years in a row, we've egg-hunted in our winter jackets!

Party Time

We caught up with Mason's buddy Matthias last weekend for his third birthday party. Mattias and his family are friends of ours from Nursery North. It was great to see him and his parents, meet his new baby sister, Olympe, and catch up with all of our old friends.

Mason sported a cream cheese moustache:



Thanks in part to his multi-tasking -- Thomas toys in one hand, breakfast in the other:



The birthday boy:



Making like a clown, while playing with the spit balls ... seriously:



Cute little Peony poses for the camera:

Catching up with...

Mason's secret twin, Malka, who we've known since they were about six months old and partners in crime in the baby room at Nursery North. We stopped by to visit Malka and her Eemah on Saturday so the toddlers could get some playtime in, and us mommies could stare at Malka's new baby brother.

Here they are giving each other a big ol' hug, while Mason tells Malka that she's his "bestest buddy."

It's so cool that even though we don't get together as often as we'd like, whenever we do, they're "bestest buddies" all over again!

Jersey Day

We took a jaunt across the river last weekend to attend our friend Nick's birthday party at the Little Gym in Jersey City (Mom and Dad-O's old stomping grounds!)

Boy, did we have fun.

As you can see, Mason LOVED the gym. All that wide-open space was almost too much to handle. Unfortunately, most of Mommy's pictures turned out like this (we call him the streak!)





So, you'll have to settle for the video highlights instead:


After the party, we headed back to the Crawford-Peterson residence for some more pizza and cake, as well as present opening and perhaps most important, a dip in their swimming pool.

Here are Nick and Mason showing off their matching swimming costumes (as Nick would say!) Aimee's got good taste...she bought them both. We love our hand-me-downs.

The two boys got along famously. It was soooooo cool watching Mason follow Nick around and learn all the wise 4-year-old tricks he had to teach!