Easy Easter

 Have you seen one blogger mom's plea for overachieving parents to tone down the holiday celebrations?  original post  I like to think that I'm helping all the other parents out there feel better.  I set the bar pretty low.  Is it because I want to return to simpler times, or am I just lazy, cheap, and kind of a holiday grump?  Maybe all of those reasons.  Our Easter weekend was nothing spectacular, but I think we got all the essential parts in.

We started off with early morning easter baskets.  They boys got some candy, high-quality chocolate Easter bunnies, and wind-up chickens that lay bubble gum eggs.  Turns out that Will doesn't really care about chocolate!  He prefers fruity candy like his dad.  Elliot, on the other hand, is more like his mom.  He scarfed down the chocolate bunny the first day, and would have eaten Will's too, but I got to it first.

 We dyed some eggs different colors.  The boys are still young so they were amazed by just the simplest little color tablets dissolving into vinegar.  Easy.  They were made into deviled eggs a few days later.

 Our church has an annual breakfast and Easter egg hunt Saturday morning.  The young men were in charge of hiding the plastic eggs outside.  You can see the varying degrees of difficulty.  Some eggs are on the ground, and others are taped up high on the light pole!  I think there was also some you had to climb up in trees to get.

 The kids had a great time running all around, and pausing periodically to check out what kind of treasures were inside their plastic eggs.

 The young women were in charge of face painting!  Elliot got a cute little bunny nose and whiskers.  Ignore the goofy look on his face.

 The boys both grabbed a good amount of eggs, but some of the other kids wanted to give them more!  Here are some girls piling more eggs into Elliot's bucket.  They were so sweet.

Calvin was present for the Easter festivities, but my favorite part with him was dressing him in his special Easter outfits.  I got this one as a gift, and he wore it to church on Sunday.  As Elliot would say, "New baby so cuuuuute!"

 Easter Sunday we watched some videos of Jesus' suffering and resurrection.  Our church website has some new Bible videos.



We went to church in the afternoon, and listened to some great speakers.  In Primary they had a really cute lesson.  They hid plastic eggs around the room, and had some kids find them.  The eggs were numbered and each had an object inside that represented part of the Easter story.  Like there was purple in one to represent the purple robe the Roman soldiers put on Jesus, and another had a round stone like the large one they used to seal the tomb.  Then the last egg was empty to represent the empty tomb after Jesus was resurrected.  I love the idea.  It's like treasure hunt meets story time meets the Easter bunny.  You just need some candy in there somewhere to make it a win-win for everyone.  Well, mostly just a win for the candy companies.
Usually Easter would be comprised mostly of family get togethers, but this year the family all left us!  Britton's parents and younger siblings went to England for spring break.  His older sister and her family drove down to San Diego.  Britton actually had to leave right after church to pick up his family from the airport so we skipped the traditional Easter dinner.  Britton made some chicken soup in a crock pot for us instead.  Easy.
So Easter weekend was totally enjoyable.  We didn't have to make it a mega-super holiday weekend.  But mega-super holiday weekends can be a lot of fun.  It comes down to whatever you can handle at the moment.  I am using the new baby excuse for a while to tone down holidays and celebrations for a while. :)

Welcome Baby Cal!

Calvin Taylor Olson made his entrance into the world much earlier than expected!  My due date was March 23, but he was born March 5.  I was in the middle of registering Will for kindergarten when my water broke.  I just finished filling out some paperwork and was resting on a tiny table in the cafeteria minding my own business when suddenly there's a huge puddle under me, and I have to explain myself to the all the teachers around me.  They were super nice and extremely helpful, and I had a ride to the hospital within minutes.  

I couldn't get Britton on the phone so my worst fears of him missing the birth were threatening my fragile peace of mind.  Actually, my worst, worst fear was not making it to the hospital in time, but luckily my father in-law drove all of seven minutes and we were there.  I tried to take it easy, and pretty soon Britton joined me.  And then nothing happened for a while.  So things were getting pretty boring so I thought some pitocin would liven it up.  Then I needed an epidural because things were getting too lively for my taste.  Pretty soon I had all kinds of tubes and cords attached to me, and even an oxygen mask!  But I didn't mind trading my freedom for manageable pain.  Labor didn't take too long, and Calvin was born about 10:50 PM!  We managed to get some sleep after the nurses left us alone.

We had some fun visits from family, and the boys met their new baby brother for the first time.  They both adore him, and love to help out, and surprisingly don't complain about him being a cry baby.

My mom came to visit and help out too after we got home.  She actually came straight from helping out my brother Alan with his new baby!  Calvin has a cousin, Oliver, that was born March 2.  He also has cousin James, Loren's son, who was born a few months ago in October.  AND Clare is expecting a baby BOY in August!  So many boys!!

 We are up to our eyeballs with boys, but it's all good.  Most of the time...  We're all adjusting.  It's going to take some time to feel like we have control of our life again.  Who am I kidding?  It's going to be chaos from now on. We better learn to love the chaos.  Look at our little family!

 I'm happy my boys are so close in age and are going to have a ton of fun together.  They'll probably get into a lot of trouble together, and have a lot of injuries together.  Oh, brother...

Let the matching outfits begin!

Winter recap

December!
We got a house!  I feel like we would probably still be making offers on houses if Britton's dad hadn't helped us get into this house.  It is great to have our own space again, and finally unpack all our stuff.  We moved in the day after my birthday.  Happy birthday to me!

 We celebrated Elliot's birthday two days after moving into our new house.  Elliot loves bowling, and playing video games with uncle Alex.

 Here we are checking out the ducks in our new neighborhood.

 There's a golf course mingled among the houses so it makes for some beautiful walks.  Here's a view of Mt. Diablo from one of the hills nearby.

Christmas came quickly and we were excited to spend our first Christmas morning in our own house.  Nana got the boys some matching clothes, of course.  

We made the usual donuts, and delivered many, many calories to our friends.  We tried to get fancy with the glaze and toppings.

Tia was the first guest to stay at our house!  She spent Christmas morning with us, and helped liven things up.  We were like zombies because Elliot had been throwing up all night.  So Will and Tia were the only ones who got sleep.

 Will was excited about his little school set with a pointer.  I think he wants to be the teacher and boss Elliot around.

 Our friends Peter and Nikki visited for during New Years with their two little boys.  It was so fun to have the four of them running around the house together.

Britton helped the scouts earn their aviation merit badge.  They got to tour a hanger at the Byron airport and see the Patriot Jet Team's jets.  Retired pilots fly these jets, and are trying to teach and train the next generation's pilots.

 Britton and Olson girls hiked up to the top of Mt. Diablo continuing the New Year tradition.  It's a great way to kick off New Years resolutions.

 Good ol' college boys got together for the annual Halo fest California edition.  This year was memorable mostly for the injuries and sicknesses that befell the group.  But they pulled through and still managed to play hours of video games together.

February!

We drove up to the mountains for some fun in the snow with family.  We stayed at a great cabin in Arnold, and a literally stayed in the cabin the whole time due to pregnancy and a cold.  But I did manage to make a delicious cheesecake for Britton's birthday.  

The next day we stopped in Columbia for a stage coach ride and some sasparilla.  

Britton and Will went for a small airplane ride to exotic Vacaville!  They had a great time, and Will even had his own headset.  In Vacaville they walked over to Fenton's for some delicious food and ice cream.  Now you know why they chose to land in Vacaville.  Mmmmm, Fenton's...

And... We're back!

I was about to turn my back on blogging forever, but the fact is, I really like looking at this blog.  So much of Will's early life is chronicled here, and I love to show old pictures, and videos to him.  So I'm going to attempt to summarize the last 6 months!
September
We took a family trip out to Yosemite.  Britton and I had nasty colds, but we did our best to breathe through our mouths and make the trip enjoyable anyway.  It was a busy trip!  We biked around Yosemite with the boys in the bike trailer and hiked to a view of Vernal Falls.

We ate lunch at some busy grill where the birds and squirrels are very friendly and used to people sharing their food.  The boys were having so much fun chasing the animals around, and were excited when they got really close.  And then disaster struck.  Elliot stuck out his finger to a squirrel and got bit.  The first aid station basically told him to suck it up and go find a band-aid!

 Here they are getting tired of Yosemite and the bike trailer.  We were all exhausted.

 The next day I wanted to check out the Acorn Festival hosted at the Miwok Indian reservation.  Random, I know.  But we stopped by Railtown 1897 Historic Park in Jamestown first.  We took a ride in a steam train that has been used in many films including Back to the Future III.  "Remember, where you're going, there are no roads."

 The boys LOVED it, of course.  And I don't happen to have any pictures of the acorn festival.  There weren't many acorns there, ironically.

October!  Will got into the preschool groove, and we had a fun trip to a local pumpkin patch.

 Will is having a great time at this preschool, and I love all the art projects he brings home!  At his old preschool he never really drew/colored/created anything, but now he will voluntarily do all those things!

 We went back to our old neighborhood at Stanford for trick-or-treating Halloween night.  The picture below is us trick-or-treating at our old house!  The new residents took the picture for us.  So nice.  We were all Angry Birds from space.  Will's request, and I guess I had a lot of time because I made all the costumes.

 Sometime in the fall (My memory is getting fuzzy.) my friend Rachel had a business trip in CA and came to visit us for the weekend.  We spent a day in Berkeley.

We started out at Tilden park, and then had lunch at the delicious Chez Panisse cafe.  I've wanted to try that place for so long!  And we ended with a nice walk around the Berkeley campus.

 While living with Britton's parents we spent a lot of time at the park across the street.  We explored the bushes, had lots of daddy wrestle time, and climbed some trees.

 This giant inflatable ball was pretty entertaining before it finally popped.

 November

We had the usual murder mystery dinner Thanksgiving weekend.  This year's theme was Once Upon a Time fairy tale type stuff.  I made one of the dwarf hat/beards with felt and staples!  Over the weekend we also got to meet Kelsey's BF Ty for the first time!  He was bombarded with Olson family and traditions, but he went along with it all pretty well.  Then we started the winter holiday season off with some ice skating, and decorating the parents Christmas tree.