Easter, MoA, Dancing

Here's two pictures of Julia and Finn having fun doing an Easter egg hunt. They got to color eggs, but we hid plastic ones for fear of misplacing a real one and getting a stinky surprise a few days later. Finn did fine finding his first two eggs, one in each hand. It was beyond those initial two that gave him issues.

Jason and Tracie were visiting on Easter weekend. We took the short trip over to the Mall of America and spent part of the day there. Julia got a kick out of the park in the mall and she was really excited to see some characters that she knew.

Julia had her 2nd dance recital tonight. She did a really great job and had lots of fun. She was wearing bright pink with a crown she made herself.

Walking, Signing, and Housing

This really is supposed to be a multiple-times-a-month type thing...seriously.

Finn's been doing a lot of growing, learning, and exploring this past month. He's been walking for a number of weeks and each day that goes by he's getting better and faster at it. Now he's to the point where if Julia bumps him or grabs something from his hand, he takes it all in stride, literally.

Besides the walking, Finn also started to repeat his first sign back to us. For several months now, mainly at meals, we've been showing him some different sign language words. Then one day, he started doing "more" back to us when he was finished with his food! "More" was the first sign that Julia learned too. It's quite exciting because even that simple form of communication is the first true form of communication we've had with him - where it's very clear what he wants because he's using a word. The side effect is that we can't really turn down his requests for more food after we taught him how to do it.

Julia has been having some fun of her own. And it's not all just hanging out with her ultra cool dad.

We also took the kids to the Minnesota Children's Museum where Julia had a lot of fun seeing the Sesame Street exhibit. Here she is pretending to be a turtle.

This month was also a time of firsts for Julia too. She got her first tattoo! She used to be afraid of the UWRF mascot, Freddy the Falcon, but now she'll be the first to tell you that "he's not scary because it's just a person inside a costume."

As for the non-kid news - We've been looking at houses off and on for several years but within the last few months started to a little more seriously. Last Saturday we saw one we really liked. Sunday we decided to make an offer, Monday we made the offer, Tuesday the sellers accepted the offer! We close on the house in May and we're very excited...but I don't think the realization has really sunk in yet. Below are a few pictures from the online listing of the house.