Easter

Easter each year always means lots of Easter egg hunts. This year Russell knew what he was doing. He was more particular about what color egg he wanted to put in his basket too. 

Our neighborhood has an Easter extravaganza with a egg hunt. It was his last year being in the littlest age group. You'd think they would have put age appropriate things inside the eggs, but no. They were full of hard candies for the most part. The kind that no one wants to eat and small children would choke on. His candy was mysteriously replaced with candy Grandma has sent while he napped. 

They always have a petting zoo there too. He was very into feeding the cow and picking up the little chicks. He was very gentle, unlike some of the bigger kids. Always feel bad for petting zoo animals. 

The Mormon Mommies playgroup we hang out with also put on an egg hunt again this year. Last year there were maybe 8 kids looking for eggs, this year the number was closer to 20! But each kid got to find 10 and everyone was happy.

This was Russell's first year getting to color eggs. He had a grand time and didn't get as messy as I thought he would. 

He tried out some of the cascarones too! He preferred to break them on his own head... silly guy.

Easter Sunday we went to Papa and Bear's ward to listen to the program and music that Stephen's mom was in charge of. It was fantastic, as always. Then Russell got to find the Easter basket that the Easter bunny hid for him at Papa's house. He was very pleased and I was not able to get a decent picture of him with his basket because all the things inside were too exciting.

Then onto the last egg hunt of the season. Aunt Ashee hid some in tricky places, but we found all of the eggs so Papa doesn't have to find them months later when he is doing yard work like last year!

Zoey helped too!

Then Russell took turned breaking cascarones on everyone, but mostly himself!

A Day Out with Thomas

Each year Thomas the train does a tour around the country where you get to take a train ride with Thomas as your engine. I saw info about it last year, but Russell wasn't into train all that much. This year he and his friend Wesley were much bigger fans. We all decided to bite the bullet and pay to go this year knowing there was a chance the Thomas phase could be over if we waited another year. The boys had a GREAT time... the parent were a little underwhelmed by the actual train ride (which was the part that cost money of course).

The fun started almost immediately for Russell when we got to ride a bus to the train station!

There were tons of little free activities for all the little ones to do!

Russell got his first tattoo!

Colored a picture

Drove Thomas around in circles

Percy... brings the mail on time

Thomas... he's the cheeky one

Practicing his train driving skills more...

Got his face painted. Didn't move a muscle the whole time!

Played on all the little train tables- it was hard to 

get your hands on a train with all the kids there

Looked at some cool model trains

Drove Thomas some more...

Then it as time for the big event- taking a ride on Thomas!!

We were one of the last to join the line to get onto Thomas,

 so we ended up at the front of the train in 'first class'...

Outside our train car

It's Thomas!

So everyone was supposed to be able to get a picture right in front

with Thomas... we were almost there when they announced that they

were running behind and had to cut everyone off. We could wait 40 minutes 

if we wanted to... not going to happen with 2 two-year olds. So this was

the best we could get... Boo!

Russell was very uncooperative for pictures at this point

Wesley was really excited to meet Sir Topham Hatt but nervous,

so we sent Russell up first (dont think Russell knew who he was). 

Wesley never made it up there! 

While we waited for the bus to take us back to the car we checked

out the little petting zoo they had. I had to force Russell to leave. 

He was in animal heaven!

We just happened to drive past a bluebonnet field on our way

home. Since the few patched near us are always crawling with

photographers we took advantage of the field- painted face and all.

Video Game Museum

Between Saturday conference session we went out to check out the National Video Game Museum that was letting people in for free in celebration of their 1st anniversary. There was lots to see, but lots of people trying to check it all out. It may be worth paying the admission price to be able and play all the old games they had. We had a pretty good time anyways...

There was also a train museum in the same area that Russell wished we had gone to. We walked around the outside and looked at some. He wanted to ride on them!