Easter 2018

We arrived in West Palm Beach early afternoon on Easter Day. After a detour to buy Benji some clothes (his suitcase was forgotten in Cville) we made our way to Grandpa Steve's house.

The first thing the kids do every visit is to check under the seat cushions for "lost" change. This year, Grandpa Steve had a special treat waiting for them:

Indian Head pennies (and $2 bills). They spent some time trying to find the oldest -- Benji found one from 1881!

After a little time relaxing, we set up an actual Easter Egg hunt for the kids. It was a lot of fun to hide eggs in Grandpa Steve's yard -- all the palms and other exotic trees had little nooks that were perfect for the plastic eggs:

April Fools! 2018

April Fool's Day falling on Easter this year was too good an opportunity to pass up. We got the kids all hyped up for Easter morning in Herndon and a shared egg hunt with the Lamy-Petersons:

Baskets waiting, to set the scene

And...go! Looking for the eggs

Still looking.....

Where are they all?!?

The face of a boy who just realized he got punked

We told them we would make it up to them with their Easter baskets. I had prepped the kids earlier, telling them that because of Spring Break travel they were only going to get eggs filled with candy in their baskets.  We set them loose to open their eggs:

What is this? It says, Do Not Eat....

Hey!?! This is my indignant face

Oooh...this one has all black jelly beans (she hates those)

Trash?!

Ewww...cooked pasta

And Easter grass.  Abby thought this was all very funny.

Benji, not so much

We relented and gave them their real baskets

Girlie was very excited about these lint rollers (she'd been asking for them)

Just before this landed on the ceiling

Spring Break, Day #1

Abby visited the Smithsonian American History museum for an engineering presentation in the fall and thought it looked cool. She asked if we might want to go back, and we readily agreed. We had a free day in Washington D.C. before flying to Florida and decided to use it for exploring the museum:

Benji was, of course, immediately attracted to the computers with polling information

And the teleprompter

Abby liked the Hall of First Ladies (and their gowns)

Hall of Inventions

In the afternoon, we headed to the Lamy's house, where Benji and Sophia had a "project:"

Benji and Sophia were determined to get this box to go down the hill:

Scoping out the project

Adding some grease

Attempt #1

 After this failed, they moved to a bigger hill with just the greased cookie sheets and were successful. We all cracked up when we saw the "emergency bucket" they brought along with them:

Contents: 2 water bottles, 1 stuffed dolphin (as crash test dummy) and band-aids

Passover Seder 2018

I actually remembered to snap a few pictures at Cousin Denise's house before we started this year:

All-City Choral Concert

Benji was very excited to take part in this concert which featured every Charlottesville City Schools chorus. The theme was "All You Need Is Love" and the groups sang a number of songs related to that theme. The elementary school choruses sang alone and together with the older kids:

Filing in at the start of the concert

The whole group on stage

The elementary kids back (and up front) for the finale

Easter Eggs 2018

The week before Easter was a bit of a blur, and we squeezed in dying eggs very quickly one week night before we left for spring break:

Spinach plant

It sprouted! Benji was delighted: