St. Patrick's Day, NOLA, and Easter

It's been a busy week! Monday was the St. Patrick's Day parade at Natalie & Owen's school. It was hard to convince Natalie to wear green, but she had a new outfit she got for her birthday that included green pants with pink ladybugs and she wore pink shoes, so she gave in. Poor Owen did not get to participate in the parade (the teachers may be hesitant about crossing the busy street with a group of 2 & 3 year olds). So he was a spectator from his playground until Mom came to get him to watch with her from the esplanade. That was a nice treat mid-morning on Monday; they had bag pipes and all at the parade! On Monday evening, Natalie's friend Jack and his mom came over to stuff easter eggs for the school egg hunt on Thursday. Natalie & Owen really enjoyed that project. Tuesday morning before school Mom let everybody open their Easter goodies from Grandma Laura and Grandpa Roger. They were pretty excited about their new stuff. Tuesday afternoon Mom & Dad (& Henry) had an orientation meeting for Henry at school. We were planning on starting him at 8 months like Natalie & Owen, but there is a waiting list at Esperanza, and an opening came up for April, so we took it. It's only a month early. So we really like his teacher and we think he'll do great when he starts next week. Thursday was the Easter egg hunt at school. Moms & Dads were not invited to Owen's hunt, but Mom was able to go watch Natalie hunt for eggs. She did very well, and filled her basket in no time. Thursday evening Mom, Natalie, and Owen had fun opening all the eggs they found and checking out the goodies.








Friday Dad was off work and school was closed. We headed to New Orleans - Mom was not off and had to conduct a quality and safety audit of the field investigation crew. We had a nice dinner with Paul & Mimi Friday night, then went to bed early so Dad could rest for the 10K he ran on Saturday. Sat morning he ran the Crescent City Classic 10K, and ran a respectable time. Mom & the kids hung at the room and enjoyed room service while we waited for him to get back. We headed back to Houston on Sat afternoon so the Easter bunny could find us on Sunday.







Sunday turned out to be a really nice day. The weather was nice and Natalie and Owen had a good egg hunt in the front yard. We worried that Nat would find all the eggs like last year, but this year Owen actually came out with more eggs. The kids all got some cool stuff from the Easter bunny, and we enjoyed the afternoon outside playing & relaxing from all of our travels (and other stress - what with Dad's work situation being an employee of Bear Stearns!!). We're looking forward to some low key weekends coming up.