Hunting and Scooting

On Saturday we ventured out for our neighborhood Easter Egg hunt, and Elise was very excited.
There were several kids there, and each child was to take home a dozen eggs, but there had to be extras, because after each basket had a dozen, there were still many, many eggs left to be gathered...so we got a full basket.

Here's some of the loot. Of course, we've had to monitor the candy intake this week, but that's all part of the fun.
Sliding at the playground after hunting.
Also, Elise was given the pleasure of using one of our neighbor's little toddler scooters. Their little girl has outgrown it, and it was just taking up space in their garage...so now they've offered it to Elise to use. I have to admit that a little 3-wheel scooter was no where on my radar as something I would think she would enjoy - but what a hit! Even better than the trike. Every day since Thursday last week she wants to get outside and use her scooter with her helmet. So - here's a clip of her riding it only a day after bringing it home. She's growing up so fast.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

On Saturday, March 20th, we welcomed the first day of Spring, and celebrated my mom's birthday. We went to a new cupcake shop at the Ballantyne Village. If you don't have a cupcake shop in your town, I'm told these are the latest trend...and they may be here to stay...just like your ice cream shops. This is a sample in their shop of a cupcake bouquet they can make...but we opted to each choose our own flavor.
Part of our samples included, lemon with lemon custard filling, nutella filled with Vanilla buttercream, chocolate with strawberry buttercream...and some kind of turtle. Very yummy!
It was our first, warm, breezy day in months with temps in the upper 70's...so we all sat outside near the fountain to enjoy our confections.
Yes, and in honor of sandal season...Elise picked out some spring colors for her nails: purple toe-nails and pink finger-nails. After we were done, she walked around and kept saying, "Mommy, these are just beautiful."

Welcoming Spring

March has been a month of trying to get warmer weather here in Charlotte. Finally, we are starting to see average temps after an unusually cold winter.
Elise and our neighbor, Kaylie were thrilled to finally get outside a bit.



One of the joys of home-ownership is fixing things when they go wrong. (Insert sarcastic sneer here.)
A few weeks ago, I was driving home and hit my garage door remote, and noticed that my door wasn't opening very fast - and as I pulled in the driveway, I could see the door was bending toward the center & getting demolished! John was away for the evening, so I called my dad to come over. Evidently, the spring that pulls the door open had broke in two, and completely pulled the door to the center as the opener was trying to work. Thankfully, we didn't have any cars in the garage...we would have certainly had damage to them. But, the picture below actually shows the door after we pushed it back out a bit to have some measure of security. I'm happy to report that after waiting 2 weeks for the door to come in, we now are even more grateful to have access to the garage for our vehicles and Elise's toys.
Last week I had one of my friends, Rachel, from Minneapolis visit Charlotte, and so we chose to visit the Latta Plantation near Huntersville, NC. I've never been, and so this was a good visit for me too. I was able to take her to some of my favorite spots here in the Queen City...Thanks for the fun!