Early Easter celebrations

It was a pretty quiet week.  Since we are going to be in Florida for Easter this year we celebrated early with G&G Baranko and had a great time.

Dying Easter eggs

Looking at the Easter goodies after the annual egg hunt

Yummy Easter dinner

Claire building towers in school one day

LEAD Dinner

We had a fun weekend highlighted by St. Patrick's Day festivities with the Bullocks and the Brinkers (in town from Ft. Wayne) and then a fancy charity dinner with Rebecca & Peter, and Lisa & Steve.  Always fun to get dressed up and go out with friends, especially for a good cause.  LEAD (linking efforts against drugs) is committed to preventing substance abuse within the youth population.  

While Luke doesn't typically nap, occasionally he just falls asleep in the middle of the day

Spumoni thought that was a good idea too

Kinderhaven skating day - Matt took them

Apparently Claire stayed up much better this time than her first skate.

St Patrick's Day in Naperville

Parade

Andy & Trevor with Luke & Matt

Nicki and Katie 

All the kiddos

The guys snuck away from the parade fun to have a green beer

Post parade lunch at Nicki and Andy's

LEAD Dinner

Lisa and Steve

Matt bought this from a wine store that was going out of business for our new wine cellar!  Now we just need some wine!

Pancake time!

Loving this warm weather!  Iso sent this of the kids eating lunch outside after school one day.

Reptile Rampage

Pretty quiet week.

Playing monopoly 

I went to Dallas for work this week for a couple days for employee focus groups on our brand strategy, met this lovely Beauty Advisor

Kevin Walgreen & a store manager (he is the great grandson of the founder, a VP of the company and somebody I work with pretty frequently)

Back home and had some friends over

The annual Reptile Rampage

Claire liked the turtles

Bubba!

painted tatoos

These little boxer briefs crack me up

Luke did a project for school all about Australia.  He researched it at the library and him and Isolene made this exhibit that he was so proud of.

PRINCESS PARTY!!! (HB to M&C)

Matt & I took time out of working to take Claire out to lunch for her birthday

Our baby girl is 3!!!  It took quite a fun Cinderella/Princess Party to appropriately celebrate the occasion!  It just so happened that her birthday party fell on Matt's actual birthday, so you could say that the princess party was for Matt too:)

Giant chocolate cake piece from the Cheesecake Factory

Matt got cheesecake for his bd choice

The construction walls are down!  Just in time for the bd party.  It feels so real now!

Carpet in!  Office

Guest room

Birthday cuddles.  She gives you one Minnie to cuddle, while she cuddles the other Minnie.

Gifts from Auntie Kristin, Uncle Cory, PJ & Seb

Wasted no time in trying out her new paint pens

Out to dinner on Claire's actual birthday with Uncle Ben and Aunt Linda - in town for C's birthday.

First time taking the kids to a hibachi grill - fun, but I think they were still a bit too young.

BD pineapple and a song for Matt

Laying out the pink carpet for our princess guests

We hosted the party in the new part of the basement!  Decorations compliments of Linda and Ben

Little stations of all of Claire's favorite things around the room. This is the beading station.

Food table (pool table converted)

Sparkly princess Playdoh station

Tea party station

We had a bunch of siblings of the princess guests who came, too, and they enjoyed the bounce house

Playing Play Doh with friend Sophia

Cinderella even came to Claire's party.  It was Matt's idea to invite her (so cute of him) and Claire was enamored of her

Dancing with Cinderella

Cinderella reading a story

Playing games

Making balloon animals

Face painting

Cinderella Cake!

Photo Opp time!

Cinderella fell over after we served half of her dress!

Boys and girls liked Cinderella and her face painting

Luke wasn't very into her though

Jeff & Madeline seemed to enjoy the party

It was a pretty mild day, so a few friends stayed for an after party which was so fun!

Claire eating the frosting off of the Cinderella cake doll

Matt thought it was so funny that she was eating frosting off of this naked Barbie

BD gifts from G&G Mackus - pretty ballerina musical jewelry box

Matt enjoying a slide of birthday French Silk Pie on his birthday before bed

Breakfast with B&L before they headed back to the airport

Walking out with Uncle Ben

Opening gifts from the day before- Anteater Antics game from B&L was a hoot!

Another nice day - so spent some good time outside

Still fun to see the new house

Open Lands hike with the new bug box from G&G Mackus

Looking for bugs

It was sooooo muddy, Luke had a grand time putting his rain boots into the muddy parts

Picnic lunch at the beach

Climbing the dunes 

A full day outside calls for some time by the fire - it is still February.

Wet bar cabinets in and construction wall down