Is This Real Life?

 Have you ever looked at the calendar and thought, "Holy Goodness! It's been two weeks!" or something like that? Well that's me right now. Time is fa-ly-ing and I can't seem to find a minute to catch my breath. 

No major milestones or funny stories to report, but the Holding girlies have taken some pretty cute pictures lately, so that's all I've got for you today. 

Photos of real life.

 very real life - I don't believe in makeup on weekends. 

 Daddy leaves for work very early - sometimes before 6 - so we send him good morning breakfast pictures

This happened: 

 ice storms in April . . . rude. 

 My family does a March Madness bracket - I don't follow college basketball, but I love filling out brackets using weird methods (uniform colors, mascots, etc.). This year I had Michigan winning and my sister had Louisville. I attempted to talk smack, but she doesn't get me, apparently: 

 We are still working on sleep training - but mostly Emma is training us. This is her 'winning' face

 Bed head

  Car seat cruisin'

 channeling Rainbow Brite

 The girls spent the night at Nana and Papa's house when we had a pipe in our basement burst. There was a small flood and the restoration people were going to be coming and going until possibly after midnight to try and save our stuff.

 We are quite ready for summer - these ladies love playing outdoors!

 These are just funny:

Look what I found

 I think the pictures on my phone sometimes tell the story of my life. So here's a glimpse into our latest nonsense:

 Emma cannot sleep alone. She needs someone in her room with her in order to fall asleep. We sneak out after she finally dozes off. She wakes up a few times in the night and if it's past midnight, one of us goes to sleep in her room with her. We have a baby gate in front of her door, but girlfriend has a temper and busts that gate down. She did this one night and I HAD TO WORK (since she barely naps) so I ignored her while she cried next to my bed. I eventually shut down my laptop and checked on her and found her asleep on our bedroom floor.

 More on the no-sleep. She was supposed to be napping this day - but woke up, found herself alone, and cried. A lot. So I snuggled her back to sleep. She slept like this for over an hour. 

She does this weird walk where she bends over and shuffles her feet. We call it "the Emma Sneak"

 Crashed in the car one day - maybe if you slept at night and during nap time, this wouldn't happen, Emma!

 Stylin' Lady!

 Took these at the park!

 My mom and I go get pedicures about every 6 weeks from April - October. This time she wanted to take Lexi along. I was a little nervous about how she would handle everything but she loved it and kept everyone entertained while she got her fingers and toes painted (purple with white flowers and golden sparkles, in case you wanted to know).

Easter 2013

Happy Easter!

I was trying to work in a way to include the word "ouch" or "ow" but I'm not feeling particularly clever tonight. 

I blame Emma - she's not a sleeper and it's making me dumber. More to come on that later.

Easter was really low-key this year, but nice. We normally have large family get-togethers for Easter, but this year it was the four of us, plus my mom. My dad was visiting my Nanny for an extended stay and missed all the shenanigans. 

We got up early and went to 7:30 Mass on Easter morning. This was my brilliant idea, and it totally paid off! The girls were still a little sleepy and the Mass wasn't nearly as crowded as our usual 9:00 Easter Sunday Mass.

 Matching dresses, sleepy heads. 

After Mass the girls found their Easter baskets that the Easter Bunny hid for them the night before. Emma's chocolate kisses lasted less than 2 minutes. She may have eaten a little foil wrapping in her rush for the chocolate.

 Lexi showed a little more restraint, but declared this "the best Easter EVER!" after seeing that the Easter Bunny brought her a bunch of new books, a Disney princess game and couple of candy filled eggs.

Nana wanted to play Easter Bunny so she brought the girls some new movies. 

Lexi was VERY excited about her new Barbie movie.

 and Emma got a DVD copy of 'Rio'

We have this on the DVR and watch it all the time and she sings to songs, so when she saw the cover she started singing,

 "I gonna take you to Rio"

We had an Easter egg "hunt" in the front yard. 

I say "hunt" because the eggs weren't hidden, but that made it easier for the little fingers to find. 

 much like last year, Lexi only would pick up eggs of a certain color. Last year it was pink only, this year was pink, purple, and gold. 

 

The day was gorgeous. 

GORGEOUS! 

We played outside all afternoon.

 

 So back to the opening when I said I wanted to talk about "ouch":

 - Paul had gone for a run on Saturday morning, and slipped on some mud and scraped a lot of skin off his knee. He's ok, and I've had a lot of fun playing know-it-all medic. 

 - Lexi got her heels caught in the screen door and scraped her heels up Sunday night. Luckily I had purple bandaids. 

 - Emma fell down once every nine minutes. She gets her gracefulness from me, I'm afraid. 

 - I had a mole removed on Friday. It didn't hurt, but the hole in my skin is a little tender (and looks weird). 

EVERYONE got a dose of ibuprofen on Sunday night to end our lovely holiday.