My birthday cake

 I turned 26 this month. As my dear husband likes to tell me, I'm closer to 50 than to birth. He likes to milk the 1.5 months that I'm older than he is for all they're worth. Which, really, isn't much, so whatever. I made myself a birthday cake this year. I probably wouldn't have, but, you see, I made all this modeling chocolate so that we could make chocolate flowers for activity days, and then Lacey had a fever of 103, so I had to cancel and was left with all this chocolate. So I decided to make some flowers anyway and stick 'em on a cake and call it good. I am 100% novice at decorating cakes, so I was pretty pleased with it. (FYI, the "leaves" are marshmallows that I cut in half diagonally with scissors.)

And yes, it was delicious.

Fashion show

I ordered a bunch of summer clothes for Lacey off of JCPenny.com. I ordered them all in size 4T, because Lacey is so big, so when they came I wanted her to try on a couple of outfits to make sure they would fit. They all fit fine, of course, but the couple outfits turned into EVERY outfit, with pictures and poses to go along with. It was actually tons of fun, we both loved it. Lacey struck some pretty silly poses. And yes, she came up with them all by herself. For some reason, most of them involved holding a spatula on the piano bench.

Perry the Playdoughpuss

 Sometimes, you just gotta make time to play with your kids. And so Lacey and I made play dough Perrys. And after I took these pictures, Lacey proceeded to put eyeballs all over Perry the Platypus. It was funny.

Easter 2012

This year was the first time that Lacey could really have some fun participating in the Easter festivities. Since we have church at 9 am, I decided to hide Easter eggs while Lacey was taking her afternoon nap so she could hunt later in the day. It's so much fun watching Lacey really experience these things for the first time. I was also really glad that we had such a nice spring day to celebrate on. Not like Lacey's first Easter....

Amy was pretty excited to go outside and hunt for eggs. That and she's always smiley like this. She's just a smiley baby. I'm so lucky.

Oh look, it's me. In a picture (the one of the back of my head doesn't count). Weird. But mostly it's my cute baby, who is getting BIG.

She really was having more fun than it looks like she was having in this picture.

I filled the eggs with a little big of candy, little rubber animals, and those little sponge capsules that turn into animal shapes when you soak them in water. Lacey had fun with those. While she opened her eggs, we talked about why we celebrate Easter, and about how the empty eggs can represent the empty tomb after Jesus was resurrected. I've already started planning activities for Easter next year, when I think Lacey will be old enough to start to understand a little better, that will help us to focus on Jesus and the resurrection for Easter. I'm excited for that!

Grandpa Welker

My dad came for a short visit (along with my sister, but I have no pictures to prove it). It was nice to have him here for a couple days. Come back soon, Grandpa Welker (and Aunt Sarah)! Grandma can come, too.

And you may be interested to know, Grandpa, that Amy's face is MUCH better and has no rashes (and hence no scratches) any more. Finally. I wish the same could be said for the rest of her body, poor baby.