Happy Easter!

Easter? Really? Already? We almost forgot to prepare Caden for it this year, but he picked it up pretty quickly when we mentioned Easter baskets and gifts! The first thing he noticed in his basket was unguarded (e.g. kept on a high shelf and portioned by Mama and Dada) jellybeans. He immediately got to eating them, lest they disappear any minute (as they did!).

The Easter bunny brought lots of fun gifts including Spiderman undies (good thing, since Caden has already outgrown the smallest 2T/3T size!), Mr. Bubble bubblebath, goldfish crackers, a couple little chocolate bunnies, and a remote control car. There were also jellybeans hidden all around the living room, and it was fun watching Caden catch onto searching for them.

After opening Easter baskets, we drove out to Danvers to go to an Easter service at a United Methodist Church. Caden was enthralled with the service - including the children's bell choir (they were wearing gloves!), adult and children's choirs, children's time up front (he later asked who Jesus was and if he was a boy or a girl), and the sermon. He liked to sit up on our laps our stand leaning into the aisle to get the best view! The only time he made noise was in the middle of a quiet prayer when he said, loudly 'No noise?'

After church, we returned home to enjoy the cool but sunny day. Caden and Dada made paper airplanes with Caden's new construction paper from Nana and Boopa, and his Easter photo shoot turned into paper airplane throwing.

In the afternoon, we dyed Easter eggs, then had a nice dinner of wild Alaska sockeye from our local Whole Foods.

Monday is Caden's day off from school, and Mama and Dada had volunteered to bring a tidepool exhibit in to show the toddler and pre-school classes. Unfortunately, we seem to have misplaced all our photos, but as you can imagine, it was a super fun day for us and the ~50 kids, many who started afraid to even touch a seastar and ended up wanting to learn how to hold the biggest spider crab.

Unfortunately, Monday night, Caden came down with another stomach flu (that's 3 in 1.5 months, but who's counting?) and was out of school for the rest of the week. Dada and Mama worked in a.m. and p.m. shifts all week, then Mama came down with the flu over this last weekend (but is now recovering).

Once he had moved past the sitting-in-front-of-Thomas-and-Wiggles DVD stage, Caden was back to having fun with discovering bubble baths...

...and Mama's mask and snorkel set.

This next week is school vacation week, so Caden is only going to school W-F. Mama was home with Caden today, and Caden has been giving a little bit of attitude (e.g. saying 'no' when Mama asked if he would mind being extra nice since she was still getting over being sick). At one point, Caden was pleading with Mama to watch a DVD, Mama gave him an emphatic 'NO'. He responded 'No, Mama, people don't say 'no', people say 'yes''. He then retreated to his playroom, emerging a few minutes later to show Mama the 'no bed' he had built. Apparently, it is where people go when they say 'no'. And when asked if those people are good or bad, he said 'they are bad'. (the 'no bed' is to the far right by his knee, next to a house and 'stairs' that he built)

Of course, throughout the day, he was also so cute, using his doctor set to check on Mama's recovery and building, building, building with Dada!