Getting Ready in the Morning

Every morning we go through a rigmarole with the girls trying to get them ready for school.  When asked to get all dressed for school this is what McKel did:

Boots and panties.  She may be cold...

Poor McKel is constantly suffering from exzema.  You can see it pretty bad on the back of her little leg...

They are a lot of work sometimes, but I sure do LOVE these girls to pieces!!!

New Truck

Here it is!  Bret is one happy kid again.  A diesel truck.  It is loud.

Easter!!

Here is just a cute video clip of the girls the night before Easter, singing Frozen songs.  I wanted to capture it on video tape...

This year Easter was a total blast!  The Easter bunny came and brought an obscene amount of sweets and treats for the kids!  The girls had a such fun digging in to their fun baskets of surprises.  We also enjoyed dying eggs as a family, baking a homemade carrot cake, and hiding Easter eggs at the park in new Easter dresses the girls got to pick out the day before.  Avril insisted that we dress to impress, complete with new cute sandals, hair accessories, and curly hair!
I loved making the day special, and capturing the memories in lots of pictures and videos.  I was lucky enough to get some pretty incredible shots with just my little ol' iphone camera.

Here is a video clip of the girls in the morning, finding their Easter baskets...

McKel, ready to devour some mini chocolate chip cookies!

Avril is in treat heaven!!

Mike shows the girls the optimal egg dying techniques...

Surprise!  I made it in to a photo... made sure to have Mike take one so you knew mom was present...

Avril shows off her vibrantly colored Easter egg

The Mack, as Mike calls McKel...

It takes some serious concentration to get it just right...

So fun!

multi-colored egg art!

This is one of my new favorite Avril pics.  Gorgeous brown-eyed sweetheart girl.  She made the bunny ears at her school.

Avril also made these Easter crafts at her school.  She wanted to display them on the shelf in her room.  Adorable.

And here are some pics from my little photo shoot with the girls.  They looked way too cute in their Easter dresses to let a photo opp slip by...

Avril shows her sister some love...and McKel shows some love to her Easter candy :)

Sweet, adorable sisters...

Happy Easter everybody!!

Happy Easter memories :)

I LOVE this shot!  It even made it to be my new facebook profile pic!  Its just so precious.

Here's a shot of the girls' hair from the back :)  Those curl formers are spectacular!!

What a lucky mom I am... these are my babies :)

A solo shot of cutie pie Avril

Cutie patooty McKel girl!

Love this shot of Avril.  She just beams with happiness!

The girls got Mike tucked in to bed... on the comfy floor!

I took a pic of our YUMMY homemade carrot cake!

...And here are some shots from our Easter egg hunt at the park by Daybreak.  It was super windy.  The girls had so much fun playing in the freezing cold water, swinging, climbing jungle gyms, and hiding eggs!

McKel is on the hunt for plastic candy-filled Easter eggs!

Avril's basket is filling up quickly!  She is pro at this!

A sweet action shot of Avril running down the hillside, basket filled with eggs...

Beautiful girl

A very happy Avril

The girls just LOVED this little lake.  You can hear how windy it was out in the video.  You can also hear a lot of screamy squeals from little girls!

Dipping their feet in the chilly water...

McKel doing one of her favorite activities...swinging!

So much fun!!

Faster mommy, faster!

Meanwhile, Avril climbs a sweet jungle gym!

Brave girl!

Pure glee!

Whee!!  Down they go!  :)

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!  :) :)

Crash

This happened :(

 

 

 

Poor Bret's car.  We just bought the car about a month earlier, from my brother Jared.  It was such a nice car, Jared kept it in perfect condition.  So sad to see it go.  Someone hit Bret from behind while he was at a stop light.  Thank goodness nobody was seriously hurt.  The car was totaled.  Now the main problem is that Bret is once again without a vehicle...

What We've Been Doing...

Busy, busy at the Andrus home!  Its a long process trying to blend our two families in to one, and make our place in to a home.  Sometimes we have some pretty productive days, which always makes me feel optimistic about the progress we are making.
Lately we've been really getting in to the gardening thing.  Even the girls get excited about growing new plants.  Mike, especially, has taken off with gardening as a hobby.  He spent lots of time making some awesome gardening boxes that are the envy of all the neighbors.  He even had to create a slope on the side panels because our yard is not even close to perfectly flat.  I must say, it is definitely a bonus being married to such a handy man!

The pea plants the girls planted are really starting to take off!  Check out the root system on those babies.  I had no idea that's what goes on beneath the surface...

Some of our seeds we planted are starting to sprout.  We have quite the assortment of veggies in there!

This was one of mommy's projects for the girls... I wanted to help them make these cases to hold their special artwork, etc.  Avril and McKel are constantly coming home from school with little masterpieces, and I never know what to do with it... I love this idea and the girls are super excited to show off their work to anyone who will take a look at it.  We had fun making these artwork cases for them :)

This is one of my favorite McKel pictures, it captures her active personality perfectly.

Sweetheart Avril was SOOO excited to make her special artwork case!

A peek at the inside...

And here are the AMAZING garden boxes that Mike worked so hard to make:

 I will post more pics when our garden begins to grow!!

And here is a video clip of the girls trying on Mike's HEAVY backpack.  This is loads of fun (no pun intended):