Tahoe in Spring

 We spent a chilly, sunny weekend in Tahoe with Katie and Tim. 

Avery, Tim, and Katie spent Saturday skiing. We all enjoyed renting a little cabin near the lake (the Hanson family cabin is rented out for the year).

Guess what time this was taken? 5 am or 5 pm...

Answer: 5 am!

Crawdad is really crawMOM!

The Latest Hanson News Bites

So we have this Sid guy keeping us rather busy. 

He is very smiley and a pretty easy baby (these days). 

He likes listening to his brothers play. He can now intentionally bring his hands to his mouth. 

Avery has begun the ubiquitous boyhood chapter called "Lego."

And Zeal now uses the toilet and is proud of it. 

"Look! My little caca!"

Avery brought me to school for a special evening. 

He showed his number work. And then we had a dessert picnic in Oakland's Rose Garden.

Sidney has not yet reached picnic appreciation. This was with Joanie for a picnic lunch outside of Wildwood School. 

We call this mood Fusser McButters. 

A shout out to Brooke who made this onesie AND our amazing birth announcements with the chickens.

Avery can now do the dishes for real.

Spring has sprung and our garden is very happy with the recent rains.

Leaving Ilyse's Passover dinner in downtown Oakland, we looked like a regular urban fam.

Still hanging in there despite the craziness of threeeeeeeeeeee!

Rain Beach

Sometimes it's raining and you want to go to the beach. And because we're soon moving to Nantucket for a year, we thought we'd practice a rain beach day.

For some reason, we thought that Sid would keep sleeping in his carseat on the beach. 

But we were wrong! He perked right up.

Zeal got wet, so he changed into Avery's extra jacket and his cozy bear cub pants.

Easter

This year, Chris and I chose to make Easter a little less materialistic. Or rather, more home-grown and less pre-packaged. 

The boys and I made candy. We made three kinds on three different days: elderberry gummies, blueberry kombucha gummies, and raspberry chocolates. We used bunny and egg molds.

Here is Avery with our babysitter, Emma. They blew out the innards of 2 dozen eggs. 

They had very sore cheeks to show for it.

We wrapped the hollow eggs in thread and parsley (a method learned from Erika Kulnys-Brain during my Oberlin days.)

The dyes are natural plant dyes that we bought through our CSA. The colors were a bit more muted, but very attractive, we think.

These are what sleepy Easter Bunnies looks like. 

We're lucky they came in time for our family's very early morning wake-up.

The Easter Bunny took all the eggs and candies and baskets we left outside the previous night an arranged a lovely display for us. Stuffed animals from Christine's childhood, homemade candies, and some chocolate milk. Who knew that milk had a chocolate setting? Avery and Zeal did not!

(Avery did an egg hunt at school. This photo is from the class newsletter.)

And then a little Easter luncheon, casual but special.