A super fun Easter Party!

Aloka told me a couple weeks before Easter that she wanted to have a party with an egg hunt. It turned out to be a great success and the weather was terrific!
To eliminate the competitive nature of egg hunts, every child was allowed to find 10 eggs plus three chocolate eggs each.
Josh and Richard hid them discretely in a beautiful park in Nelson, called Gyro Park.

Chris holding Junie-bug

Egg hunting!

It was a potluck and my contribution was cupcakes with little jelly bean bird nests.

"Out of the mouths of babes"

This is what the total stranger said to me after Aloka leaned over to her in a waiting room that Aloka, Richard and I were in., and said "he has really stinky toots". Luckily the lady had a sense of humour as well as having her own kids and grand kids. So poor Richard was only slightly totally embarrassed.

Another incident happened as well, last month, where I received a business call but I wasn't home. Richard was in the bathroom (unlucky for him) and Aloka answered the phone because she loves to do that these days.
The lady on the phone asked for me, and Aloka politely told her I wasn't home right now, just Richard is. So the lady asked to speak with him to leave a message. Aloka said "he can't come to the phone right now. He's pooping."

Boy I bet she made that lady's day!

Strawberry Princess is no longer

Aloka's hampster died a few days ago. We're not sure how or why... we have many different speculations, old age not being one of them. It was very odd. Richard found her during the day when I had gone into town to pick up Aloka from Josh's house. The transition day is always a little hard for her so I decided to wait until the next day to tell her. Richard moved her cage out to the wood shed outside and she came home just before bedtime and didn't notice the cage being gone which i was glad about. It would have been bad timing as she was having some anxiety about going back to school after a long weekend. (She's still having some separation anxiety). That night, I came to bed late, around 11:30pm, and she heard me and woke up, half dazed, to go potty. The lights were almost all turned off, and out of the blue Aloka mumbles "where's Strawberry?" and then, "outside?" I couldn't believe it and had no idea how to answer her, so I didn't.

The next morning she had no recollection of it, and I decided to tell her after school. She was sad, but not as much as I expected, at least not right away. I think she's still processing it. Later that day she said "Oh well, I guess we can give her away now... although no one would probably want a dead hampster" I thought this was pretty funny and I told Josh. Aloka overheard me and shouted "Mom! It isn't funny, my hampster died!!" I felt pretty bad, but I think she's processing it well. We miss Strawberry...