Updates, Plus Easter 2017!

I might as well just type above the zillions of pictures I'm about to post and get it over with.  It's gonna be jumpy and random; there's a lot to update on.  Of course there is. Our life is never dull.....

First of all. Sully is the cutest and he is a darling, patient boy at the girls' dance studio every Tuesday and he has 16 teeth and he LOVES cars and zooms them around the house ALL day everyday.

And he LOVES going to sleep at night. Yep. He loves it.

 Next, I was able to sneak up to Lucy's school one afternoon and surprise her with a Happy Meal!  I stayed and ate lunch with her and her friends for the first time this year and it was more a treat for me than it was for her! Her friends and her are so cute and so sweet.  It was a precious hour that I loved SO much!  It was fun to catch her off guard and when she ran up to me and hugged and kissed me a hundred times it was the best. thing. ever. 

Now this... this is so sad. This was one of the saddest moments of my life.  We were at our friend's house and they have a 1 year old puppy.  He's some sort of Shephard, so he is big, but he is still young and overly playful.  When he gets hyper he snaps.  Usually just at heels, but that night he chose Piper's face.  When she came inside, her face was COVERED in blood and she was screaming bloody murder.  She had spit and tears mixing with the blood which just spread it everywhere and when I ran to her I honestly thought her face was ripped off.  I'm not kidding you. Our friends' felt TERRIBLE.  Adrian cried. But what could they do? No one knew their dog would do that! You can't help it when a dog does a bad thing! I was mad about the situation, but I couldn't be mad at my friends.  I just felt SO bad for Piper. She was in so much pain and she was so scared and I sobbed for her.  My heart felt like it was breaking the next day when she was still so swollen and hurting.  She is not the toughest kid, so for her this was extremely traumatic and painful.  It still kills me when I think about it all.  This happened on April 1st.  So it has been just over 2 weeks and it's looking really good, but still. Every time I see it, I am sad. She STILL has bruises on her cheek from the dogs teeth.  The bruises have been there for 2 weeks and they're perfectly straight lines down her face where his teeth dug into her skin, yet they didn't break the skin all the way down, and that is a miracle.  It's also a miracle that he didn't get her eye.  He was so close to it..... I can't even think about how much worse it could have been. I HATE that dog.  But there's not much I can do about it. My poor, sweet Pi Baby :(

On April 2nd we wear BLUE for Autism Awareness Day!

On April 3rd we wore UNC clothes for the championship Game of March Madness and GUESS WHAT? UNC won! Which means MY bracket won 2 years in a row! Maybe my family should start choosing UNC more often, hehe. We always do a family bet, and winning 2 years in a row was SA-WEET! Shawn was so excited! I ate 14 buffalo wings in a row (no lie) because we played Gonzaga and it was a tight game. Super stressful, but super fun!

This is Piper's face a week after it happened, and then 10 days after it happened. 

This is just a cute sad face....

Moving on....
"Being a parent is hard.... we had to miss our neighborhood's cute little Easter Egg Hunt today because the girls would NOT clean their room. We've told them for 2 days that if they didn't clean their disaster of a room they couldn't go. All day yesterday they wouldn't do it, and all day today they wouldn't do it. For hours and hours they just screamed and fought with us over getting it done. Timers didn't work, threats didn't work, nice talks, calm talks, punishments, etc.... NOTHING worked. The Easter Egg hunt came and went and they had to miss it. Lots of tears and broken hearts came out of this and I wanted them to be able to go SO BAD. They've been looking forward to it ALL week. But if I let them go, they wouldn't have learned a lesson, right!? Ugh. I hate this part of parenting....
"So, after her 2 hour meltdown over missing the Easter Egg Hunt, she came to me with tears in her eyes and said "Mommy, will you please take a picture of me outside in my special Easter Egg Hunting dress, since I didn't get to have a real picture looking for eggs earlier?"😥"

2 weeks after the bite. The redness around the actual bite is finally gone, but you can still see the "stripes" from the teeth marks down her cheek :(

Here is an updated picture of Schmidt. We finally got him a collar.... 6 months later!

And THIS.  This was one of the best moments this year! My friend in Boise makes custom shirts and I wanted one so badly.  So I had my girls each draw a picture- I told them to choose whatever they wanted.  Lucy drew her and I holding hands in a heart and Piper drew a Lollipop.  And 4 days later this shirt was in my mailbox.  Just like that.  It is my most FAVORITE item of clothing that I own. I am SO in love with it and will treasure it always. Forever and ever!

On Friday Lucy didn't have school and I didn't have work.  So us girls went on a Mommy/Daughter Day date and saw Beauty and the Beast! They wanted to dress up, which was adorable.  We didn't have 2 Belle dresses, but Piper was happy to be in Snow White's dress :)  It was SUCH a darling movie! I loved every minute of it!

And on Saturday, we found a local church that was hosting a community Easter Egg hunt! I was so relieved to find another one after what happened last weekend. So the girls cleaned their room this time and off we went! It was a super, duper fun event!

Sully even got in on the action. They had a 1-2 yr old section and he LOVED picking the eggs up and throwing them in his basket.  This kid has an arm on him! It's amazing to see him chuck things around the house.  I'm always impressed, even when he throws things he's NOT supposed to throw! (side note: he's oh-my-gosh-busy and SUCH a stinker when I take things away from him at home! He's walking now {still prefers to crawl 70% of the time} but he's busy, busy, BUSY boy!)

That brings us to Easter! Whoo. I made it! Here we are.  We didn't get the best pictures, but that's the way it is every year! However, I took some pictures 2 weeks ago (the day Piper got bitten by the dog, just a few hours before that terrible incident) of the kids, so I wasn't too concerned with trying extra hard to get good ones on Easter Sunday!

Oh shoot... there's more.  Here's egg dying from yesterday.  Sully loved doing this! He was so into it!

Showing off his cool creation!

And then today- Easter morning!

And THEN another Egg Hunt. This one was just a family one. Sully remembered how to do it from yesterday and just had so much fun chucking them in his basket and cracking them every time, hahaha!

And finally I'm rewinding to the hours before the dog bite, when I took a few pictures of my kids.... on a super windy day where no one looked and smiled at the same time... But you know what? Oh well. It's the memories I cherish, and I will love them forever. 

I love these little people so much it hurts.  Today is always the most perfect day to reflect on the "how" I am their Mom part.... You know why? You know how? 

Because He has risen.  

Because of Him, I am theirs and they are mine.

Happy Easter Everyone.