HELLO

Hi. I'm Amanda...a happy wife and mom to three awesome guys. We've lived here in Fort Collins for more than 20 years and are proud to call it home. Before moving to CO, I worked at a city attorney's office, making use of my law and Master's degrees from Duke. After settling in Fort Collins, I homeschooled my three (now teenage and older) sons and was delighted to experience music classes, soccer, karate, swim team, archery, Science Olympiad, First Lego League, parkour, and climbing (not all at the same time!). From 2005-10, I was also a contributing editor for a national scrapbooking magazine, authoring a book and a couple of monthly columns. From 2009-10, I founded and ran the Good Grief Blog. I enjoy learning new things, spending time with my family, volunteering with The Matthews House, traveling and indoor rock climbing.

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Sunday
Mar232008

Our day before Easter...

We had a very full day before Easter...started with our annual neighborhood egg hunt:

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The boys really enjoy this every year and it's wonderfully simple...for each kid who wants to participate, you drop off a dozen filled eggs the week beforehand. On the day of the hunt, each child simply knows that they get to collect 12 eggs. Easy. :) Afterward, the Easter Bunny usually makes an appearance. Before now, the boys have always been more interested in heading straight home to open their loot. This year, despite the chilling wind, Asher decided he wanted to have his picture taken with the Easter Bunny. (I'm sure the fact that he noticed the Easter Bunny had a wagon full of little goodies to hand out didn't factor in one little bit. Yeah. Right.)

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He doesn't look like he's just going through the motions to get to the wagon, does he? ;)

Anyhow, then we hurried home to get warm (incidentally, I *did* ask the boys to bring their jackets, but they refused)...and dye our Easter eggs:

03-22-08noah-dyingeggs.jpg 

Noah got a bit fancy, after watching Nathan attempt to make an "argyle" egg. Micah thought the crayon looked fun, though he didn't actually end up doing much more than directing Nathan:

03-22-08micah-dyingeggs.jpg 

Asher, meanwhile, had his own little groove going and cranked out his eggs lickety-split:

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Following all of this, we did some less exciting stuff (like laundry and eating) and then had our first home experience with dipping candles! Noah and I had dipped tapers at Christmas-time a couple years ago as part of a centennial village sort of outing, but we'd never tried the whole process ourselves. Last week the boys got it in their heads for some reason that we really needed to make candles. And somehow we ended up with a four pound block of wax and some wick and this is how our evening ended:

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Very cool. I think we may have found a new favorite craft activity as a family...the boys are already planning candle making for all of the upcoming holidays (short orange ones at Halloween, long red ones at Christmas, pink ones at Valentines...). Fun!

Micah, though, did not think the candle making was so fun. For his own safety from hot wax, we strapped him into his little chair. He was, um, not happy. To make it up to him, I let him be the ham that he is and took plenty of pictures like this one:

03-22-08micah-candlemakingface.jpg 

He loves the camera...what can I say? ;) Yes, btw, that's a band-aid on his forehead. You'll notice the red mark in earlier pictures...can't seem to get him to stop picking at it, so covered it up this evening. Adds to the character of the picture, don't you think? :)

And that was our Saturday. Oh. And after the egg hunt and before the candles, it snowed. There's a layer on the ground still...*maybe* an inch on the fence just outside my window here. Fun. I'll let you know how tomorrow goes... 

Reader Comments (2)

Glad you got to do your egg hunt - ours was cancelled because of mud (rolling eyes) except they didn't advertise it - instead everyone lined up as they handed out baggies of candy (SO not last minute as the three bags we received had exactly the same amount of each item). Fun huh? And this was Tashi's last year to participate. Oh well, after 8 years, can't complain!Just glad we weren't one of the familes that drove from the other side of the city (it's that good of an egg, er, candy hunt). We only had to walk two blocks. The upside? Two of my girls picked a piece of candy out of a baggies that had a number, Which means prizes, which they have never gotten, not that they ever really cared. Ended up with a Mira palm sized stuffed bunny for Mira and a cup/ball toss game for Sarah. Usually the numbers are in plastic eggs and some greedy parents just send their kids after the eggs (and cheat by helping them), then tear them apart and the kid with the basket full of plastic eggs but no $5 prize and very little candy is such a sad thing to see. I think the organizers of your hunt have their heads in the right place!

March 23, 2008 | Unregistered Commentermichellejeanne

those candles are coool! I have always wanted to try it... I even have a kit...

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