Easter

I spent the night before Easter Sunday being the Easter Bunny and setting up my table for the next day.

I took Daci to pick out her basket this week and then the Easter Bunny filled it with a Stuffed Bunny, a bunny cup with a straw, a bunny Pez dispenser, the movie Bambi, a watercolor draw board, and eggs filled with candy

I bought these gorgeous pinky purple roses as Costco for my centerpiece and then sprinkled glittery pink Easter grass all over the table

I made little name tags for each of the guests and filled a matching egg with candy for each of us

Sunday morning I took Daci outside to take some pictures.  She really doesn't like pictures and it was a challenge to get her to even look at the camera, let alone smile.  But I think we still came out with some pretty good ones.  She found some yellow flowers and twigs that she was excited about :)

After church we had Carly snap some family pictures of us in our Easter best

Then I came home and prepared the meal.  It was so much fun making a big feast and having family over! 

Daci had fun playing mommy to Eleni while I finished up cookin(don't worry, Micah is sitting right next to them making sure she doesn't fall out)

We had a yummy dinner of Ham and cherry sauce, cornbread,  funeral potatoes, and parmesan roasted asparagus.  Carly brought the yummy (and festive!) Izze drinks and made a delicious berry dessert that I forgot to take a picture of

While Daci was napping the Easter Bunny hid her basket

After dinner we had Daci search for her Easter basket.  It took her awhile and we finally told her to look by her toys.  She found it and was so excited!

Digging through her loot

We had so much fun this year celebrating Easter.  And of course, the most important part was remembering our Savior and the enormous gift he gave to us through the atonement.  I am so grateful for Him and what he has done for me and my family!

Ward Easter Party

 Easter was so much fun this year!  I love having Daci old enough to enjoy these experiences!  We spent all day Saturday and Sunday celebrating Easter.  On Saturday the ward had an Easter Party at the church.  They did an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids.  They roped off a special area for the nursery kids and I don't know if Daci has ever been so excited!  She was running around grabbing eggs and throwing them in her basket.  Then, she would stop to eat some before the hunt was over! We kept telling her to wait until after to eat so she could have more eggs.  Then she'd hop back up, swing her basket over her shoulder, and got back to work.  We have really enjoyed our ward and I love that they do such fun activities for the little ones!

Daci and I in the gym before the Egg Hunt

With Carly and Eleni before the hunt

And it begins!

Stopping for her first candy break.....Get back out there Dac!

Finding some more (and really excited about it!)

Happy with her haul

Diggin' in

Our fam after the hunt

Eleni playing with Daci's empty eggs in the gym after the hunt

Daci was SOOOOO possesive of her eggs and basket!  Eleni kept innocently grabbing for them and Daci would jerk away and give her a big crusty....we are still working on sharing :)  At least this pic looks like they are happily enjoying them together.  One second later and you'd see the jerk and the crusty :) Eleni is such a good sport.  She never gets her feelings hurt!

Well, I have many more pictures from Easter.  In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit that I loaded the pictures from Saturday and Sunday and I had 363 pictures! Obviously I have edited them down....but only to about 100 :)  I will have to share them in a few posts.  I hope everyone had a great Easter!!

Visitors and Fun

Rick's family came to visit last week for Spring Break and of course I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked.  We were just having too much fun! Obviously,  most of the fun involved food :) We went to a great Greek Restaurant in downtown Naperville called Tasso's.  Ummmmmm I found my ultimate food there.  I am a huge cheese fan and they have an appetizer called Flaming Cheese!  Seriously, its to die for.  We also had-just to name a few- Lou Malnati's (duh!), Sprinkles Cupcakes, Portillo's, and the last night we had a fun dinner with just the adults (yes, I hired my very first babysitter!  I'm not afraid to leave Daci with someone, I just didn't know how to hire a babysitter, I'd never done it before.  Is that dumb?  Okay, yeah it is.  Oh well.  I finally did it and I'm sure we will do it a lot more now!) at Sullivans!  Sullivans is my new favorite restaurant.  I just LOVE it!  Rick and I got steak, crab legs, and iceberg wedge, shrimp and lobster bisque and creme brulee and shared it all.  AMAZING!

A few of the cupcakes from left to right: chocolate coconut, red velvet with cream cheese frosting, strawberry

Carly, Me and Penny with our cupcakes (notice mine has a G on it for Gluten Free!)

The creme brulee from Sullivans. I wanted to take pictures of the whole meal but I was too embarrassed to snap some pictures in such a nice restaurant.  But when the dessert came out, I couldn't resist.  I mean come on, look at that creme brulee! Once I took the pic and wasn't so embarrassed I just died that I didn't take one of the rest of our food!

My cute hubby with his yummy dessert

Micah and Carly at Sullivans

Carly, Penny, and Sophie at Sullivans

 We were sad to see The Roberts leave!  It was fun to have family here for a while and they sure were troopers!  Both Daci and Eleni had colds and ended up having to go to the doctors while they were here.  They even had one night where no one slept because poor Eleni was up all night with a sore throat.  They were so sweet to watch the girls while we went out one night and Fred wins an award for being such a great grandpa with Daci!  It was really nice for me to have a little break from that wild girl!  I'm sure they enjoyed their trip but were really excited to get home.  I know they would love a vacation from their vacation!

The night after Rick's Family left we had a girls night with a few people in the ward.  I'm sad I didn't think to pull out my camera until after a lot of the girls had left but here are a few that stayed a little later.

One of our friends out here was struggling with her pregnancy and ended up having to have the baby taken c-section at only 27 weeks.  A bunch of the girls pitched in for a gift and I made this card for her.  Good luck Sarah!  We hope you get well soon!

Finally Catching Up

We have been so busy lately!  Like I said in my previous post, I have had the itch to get my main floor finally renovated and oh boy have we gotten a lot done!  I feel like we have a whole new house!!!  I painted the whole first floor, we replaced all the light fixtures, we replaced all of our brown/orange baseboards and doors with thick white baseboards and beautiful two panel doors (and yes, I had to paint a double coat on each baseboard and door individually!), and I am still working on my baby: the stair banister.  I will have pictures soon but I want the banister to be done before I take pics. Bear with me!

Update on my adventurous Daci-doodle:  If you read my last post, you saw that I was a little discouraged with the whole parenting thing.  I am happy to say that that hard time only lasted a week!  We nipped the smearing the poop in the bud and I am glad to report that she hasn't done that since the day of my last post.  Not only has she quit that behavior but she also turned into a sweet little angel again (not that she wasn't my sweet angel for that week, but she was a little bit of a pill!)  I don't know what it was about that week but it ended and I have my easy, sweet little girl back :)  So glad!

Along with my house renovations, we also had Rick's sister and her husband move in so we have been spending some time with them. Its been a lot of fun to have family close by again!

Our favorite Pizza here in Naperville is Lou Malnati's!  It is INCREDIBLE deep dish pizza!  One night we got together with Carly and Micah to watch some March Madness and ordered us some Lou's.

This is my cute niece, Eleni.  Isn't she adorable!?

Here's Daci with her pizza, she is pretty adorable too, right?!

They even have a Gluten Free option at Lou's!!!!  They are famous for their sausage. There is a pizza you can order that has a huge sausage patty on the top of the pizza!  Their gluten free option uses the sausage patty as the crust.  Can I just say that this is one of my most favorite thing about living here?!  I LOVE that I can finally have pizza.  And not just any pizza, but incredible deep dish chicago pizza!  Pure Heaven!

Rick enjoying his Lou Malnati's pizza.

Daci and Rick have been having so much fun lately!  When Rick gets home at night he plays with her and wears her out, just in time for bedtime!  Rick has always enjoyed playing "rougher" with Daci.  Even when she was little he would throw her in the air and swing her around.  She liked it but was really nervous about it.  Just recently she fell in love with it!  Its like she has no fear.  Rick just throws her in the air and flips her upside down and all this crazy fun and adventurous stuff and Daci just loves it! 

Gotta love that hair!

Isn't that the happiest face you have ever seen?

Another favorite of ours  here in Naperville is Oberweis Ice Cream.  Seriously, pure nectar.  I am not even an ice cream fan.  I like frozen yogurt much better but one bite of this stuff and you will just die.  On Saturday night during the Priesthood session I decided to take Daci to Oberweis to begin our tradition of girl's night while the boys are away.  She was so excited!  She loves Oberweis ice cream too.

So excited!

Yum!

I actually really hate this picture of me.  With all the home renovating and painting I was quite the scary sight for about four weeks.  I really was a mess, if you look closely you can see paint in my hair.  The ONLY reason I am putting this up is to document our special girls night together.

I got the ultimate kids fantasy (ok, kinda mine too :P) We got a scoop of birthday cake and a scoop of cotton candy.  Ummmmm....so much sugar!  Good thing I only give her that much sugar on special occasions :)

On Sunday we went to watch General Conference at Carly and Micah's house (we still don't have a working TV :( )  Daci has become quite the independent and determined child and she likes to dress herself.  I really didn't want to deal with a tantrum so I let her wear the snow suit that she just had to put on.  Don't mind her nasty mullet!  Her hair has been getting really long in the back but hasn't been growing at all on top. If I put it in piggy tails or curl it in ringlets with the curling iron you can't tell but if we have a laid back day you can definitely tell.  I finally broke down and cut it this week.  She's got a shorter, but much more current hair style again :)

Our friend in the ward (Thanks, Ashley!) let us borrow The Little Mermaid.  With me painting and working all day I have to find things for Daci to do that will keep her out of the danger zones.  She was sick of her current movies and Ashley offered to let us use her Little Mermaid DVD.  Daci LOVES it!  One night Daci was carrying around a fork from her toy dishes.  She had bent down one of the prongs and I immediately thought, "There is no way!"  I asked her, "Daci, what is that?"  She said, "A dinglehopper!" and then she started brushing her hair with it!  She had bent down her fork just like Ariel's fork and had already picked up on the name of it and what she uses it for.....after one time of seeing the movie!  I guess kids really do pick up on, and imitate what they see on TV!  Good thing that is an amazing movie and one of my all time favs!

Well thats about all for the Roberts clan.  I am really excited to post pictures of our house!  Hopefully that will come soon.  We have company this week so I haven't been able to work on my banister but hopefully next week I can finish it.  I hope everyone has a great week!  Thanks for reading!