Whew!

Today was a VERY busy day.  Double A, The Bean, The VH, Flower, Pippi, Tink, and Laughter were all here for Holidays!  Holidays is the tradition we started when DJ was 4 (she's 19 now), and try to do at least once a year, where we celebrate a bunch of holidays in one day because I'm usually not home for most of them.  So today we did:

Easter.  Each kid gets to dye 6 eggs, then we send them off on an errand and I hide the eggs (obviously it's too cold for the bunny to come do it).

 

Thanksgiving.  We eat Thanksgiving dinner, but very pared down.

We celebrate birthdays.  Each person gets a cupcake.  We've started doing only 1 candle for each, because between 7 kids and 4 adults, it would have been something like 304 candles.  11 are easier to light and blow out...

 

4th of July.  We got outside and do sparklers and smoke bombs.  There isn't always snow like this year, so this time we got to toss the smoke bombs in the snow and watch the results. 

Halloween.  We do face paint and the kids trick-or-treat around the house.

St. Patrick's Day.  We do a treasure hunt with clues to follow to find the Leprechaun's lost gold (gold wrapped chocolate).

Are you exhausted reading about it?  Because it's exhausting doing it!

 

We then all wore our matching owl pjs to the movie.  Because I am a dorky aunt who makes her nieces do stuff like that.

 

The movie was Moana, and it was a lot of fun.

Finally, today is Shoetopia's 4th blogiversary!  I think this shoe is hilarious and adorable.

Everyone is supposed to be spending the night, but sadly Pippi had a horrible headache all day and decided she wanted to go home after the movie, and Tink decided to go with her.  The VH has family stuff tomorrow so she couldn't say over.  I still have 4 kiddos sleeping over, though.

Speaking of kiddos, all of my nieces are amazing, but can I take a minute to brag on Double A and The Bean?  They still love to do Holidays, but they are also great with helping with the younger kids.  They're great with kids in general, and love hanging out with their cousins.  They are patient and kind and loving, and it makes my heart happy to watch them.  But now my happy heart and I are going to bed.

Happy Easter!

Christ is Risen!  Happy Easter!  Here are some shoes!

Oh, Irregular Choice...I'd love to know what kind of drugs you are on...

Um.  Who wears these?  Put down the glue gun and back away slowly.

Or these?  At least they are pretty colors?

Oh dear.  I really did have good intentions when I went looking for Easter shoes.  And the the results were really really frightening.  Poor little trapped bunnies.

At least these are marginally cuter.  The bunnies look a little sad, though.  And I just realized I ate zero chocolate on Easter.   I didn't go to church, and I didn't eat chocolate.  I officially suck at Easter.

I posted these last year (turns out I posted those Irregular Choice ones, too), but they're so bright and fun, and I needed a palate cleanser after the rest of this craziness.

These are cute, too, so at least we're ending on a decent note.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

3 Things:

1. I made it through Lent with the 3 things!  I missed those 2 days, but made them up, so I didn't do too bad.  And now I will stop subjecting you to this part of the blog.  I should probably tell you all of the deep things I learned about gratitude by doing this, but I'm just too tired to think straight.
2. We finished at the old house today!  Done.  Yay!
3. Christ is risen!  We celebrate the promises of the resurrection once again!

Seesters

According to Facebook (which would never lie to me) and my list of holidays, today was Sister's Day.

See?  Anna and Elsa would never lie to me either.  It would be rude.

It turns out, I have a sister, and she's pretty fabulous.

This is us on the day of her 8th grade graduation.  I was in 1st grade.  Weren't we cute?

Here are our shoes on Easter in 2010.  Seester Easter feet!  I didn't even have a shoe blog then and she still took a shoe picture with me.  Because she is awesome.

In her honor, and in celebration of sisters everywhere, I leave you with this (make sure you check out their fab shoes):

Mmmm...Chocolate

Apparently today was National Chocolate Day and I almost missed it!  I didn't find out until this evening when I looked at today's holidays to give me some ideas for this post.  Thankfully I had some chocolate in the house so I could celebrate properly.  To continue that celebration, here are some (more) chocolate shoes:

They're so pretty.  The question is, would they be too pretty to actually eat?

In non-chocolate news, I had an interview with a temp agency today.  It went OK, and they will let me know if anything comes up.  I was way over-dressed.  Not compared to the staff, but compared to the other candidates I saw there.  Apparently we have very different ideas of what professional dress means.  Speaking of outfits, I realized that as I was purging shoes these last couple of times I got rid of all of my black heels.  I wore a black pencil skirt and a black and cream top and had no black shoes.  I ended up wearing last year's Easter shoes:

I still think they're a wee bit slutty, but the hubby loves them.  He thought they looked better than the turquoise pair I originally had on (I thought a pop of color would be nice).  They did coordinate with the outfit better than the turquoise, I guess.  And clearly I need to go black shoe shopping.

Happy Easter!

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  How was your Easter?  Mine was quite nice, actually.  I went to church!  Then I came home and we talked to the hubby's family for awhile after which I had a lovely Easter nap.  While I was sleeping the hubby made whatever-is-in-the-kitchen pizza.  It was quite yummy.  Now we are hanging out with the puppies.  Time for Easter shoes!

First, the calendar.  This shoe is awesome!  I would totally wear this for Easter.

Ohhhhh, Irregular Choice.  Always crazy.

I don't need toe shoes, but these are adorable. I hope they are part of some fab Easter ballet.

DIY Easter shoes!  Next year we should all make a pair.

Babies and bunnies.  Always a good choice.

How fun are these?  So bright and cheerful.

Also bright and cheerful, but in a totally different way.  I love these.

What's up with me and pink lately?  These are super fun.  I'm also really into wedges right now.  Look at all the fun colors in these heels.

These are the shoes I wore this morning.  Nothing new this year, but these are still one of my favorite pairs.  And see?  Wedges again.

These are a pair of Clarks that I own.  I wore them a couple of weeks ago when I went to a training, and a friend of mine from seminary said she had the same shoes.  I went to her church this morning and she was wearing these exact shoes!  It was cool, but maybe you had to be there.

Hope you had a fabulous Easter!  Χριστός ἀνέστη! (Christos Anesti! (Christ is Risen in Greek)).

Buttercup

I cheated on my puppies tonight.  Yep, I flirted with, and petted, another dog.  The hubby and I had dinner with our next-door neighbor, and she has a dog named Buttercup, who is 11 and really sweet.  She kept bumping my hand with her head, so I had to pet her, which was probably a mistake for more than just cheating on the puppies as I now have a sinus headache, an asthmatic cough, congestion, and gunky eyes.  But I'm going to blame that on the cat instead of sweet Buttercup.  When we got home Chalupa and Tallulah spent 5 minutes sniffing my pants and looking at me accusingly.  I never even used to like dogs, and never wanted to pet them or let them near me, and now I have 2 and I'm having an affair with the neighbor dog.  I've become a dog slut. But enough about me, let's talk about shoes.  Buttercup the dog is awesome, and buttercups the flowers are also awesome.  They make me think of spring because we would always go look for them when it started warming up.  They're all sweet and little and yellow, and I couldn't find a single pair of shoes with a buttercup on them.  Rude.  So we'll look at what I found instead:

Buttercup wedding shoes.  They say nothing about buttercups to me, but they're really cute.

Buttercup yellow, at least.  And cute flats.

Princess Buttercup shoes!  Did I need three pairs of them for one post?  Um, duh.  They're PRINCESS BUTTERCUP SHOES. Of course I did.

Definitely want these for the imaginary canvas shoe collection.

This was the only picture I could find with shoes and buttercups.  Which is OK, because I love the shoes, and that dress in the middle is adorable.  Damn, I wish I were skinnier again so I could wear that cute dress.

Yellow used to be my favorite color.  Here is my Easter outfit from that time period:

It was a suit.  There's a yellow skirt to match, and I think yellow tights.  I know.  I was awesome.  Shout out to Mom who made the outfit!

Also, I've had this stuck in my head the last few hours:

Hops

Between high school and college I took some time off and did daycare for a family in my home town.  KGH was 2 1/2 when I started and KAH was 3 months.  I was only supposed to take a year off, but I fell in love with those babies and 1 year turned into 2 1/2.  Both of them had some funny ways of saying things, like all kids do.  My family still says hot weeder hider instead of hot water heater because KGH said it and it cracked us up.  KAH had his own language, though.  I swear I should have been able to count it as my foreign language requirement when I got to college.  One thing he did was to call animals by their sounds instead of their names.  Dogs were woofs, cows were moos, etc.  My favorite, though, was bunnies.  Bunnies don't really make sounds normally, so KAH promptly switched gears and called them hops.  That was a rather long way of saying that today we will be talking about hops.  You might have thought we were going to talk about jumping, or possibly beer, from the title, but nope.  It's still Easter, so we're going to talk about bunnies.  And because the PF sent me some really fun bunny shoes:

Oh my goodness do I love these.  So very adorable!

 

These are also cute in a sweet and goofy kind of way.  I can totally see a 5-7 year old rocking these.

Adorable.  Must find a pattern.  Although my tension is usually off and my baby shoes end up being slightly different sizes.  So they would be sibling bunnies instead of twin bunnies.

These are not from the PF.  I found them and had to share.  I love the blue with white polka dots, and would love whole shoe if it didn't mean WALKING ON THE HEAD OF A BUNNY.  What is wrong with people? Poor little hops.  I'd bet they'd have lots to say about this.

And one last picture.  My uncle sent this to me the other day.  These are slippers that were given to me.  They were very warm and comfortable.  Weird to walk in, though, as the heads were heavy and flopped around some.  I've never really thought it was all about me, though.  It's a running joke in my family, especially with me and my aunt, where we say this, but never actually mean it.

Ah, hops.  KGH is now 23 and got married last summer (so I guess she'd be KGHK now), and KAH just turned 21 yesterday.  I am oooooold.

To Post Or Not To Post...

...that is the question.  I haven't been posting much lately.  You being observant readers probably noticed this from the lack of posts.  The result is that I'm rather behind in things that I'd thought to post about.  Easter was Sunday, but it's the season of Easter until Pentecost, so I can still talk about it.  I actually bought new shoes for Easter!

I wanted these because they said Easter to me (they're much prettier in person).  But they didn't have any in my size, of course.  I swear, everyone wears my size, because it seems to be the one size that's always missing.  At any rate, no flowery shoes for me this year.  Now, here's where things got interesting:  I was shopping with the hubby, and the hubby is VERY opinionated.  He kept selecting black shoes.  I kept telling him I wanted something bright and fun for Easter.  Sadly, there were really no colorful shoes that I liked or were in my size.  I ended up with shoes of the hubby's choice (making him very smug):

Cute, but not my usual style choice.  I got lots of compliments on them, though, so they must have been OK.  The hubby also had a say in the dress I ended up getting (I couldn't figure out what dress to wear with these particular shoes), so then he was extra smug:

Again, not something I would necessarily choose for myself.  It grew on my throughout the day, but I kind of felt like I was trying to hard with the dress or something.  Maybe it's just a little more girly than I usually go with?  

So that's Easter.  And since Easter has come, I have broken out the Easter socks.  Usually I would wear holiday socks the whole month of the holiday, but this year the socks felt like Alleluia...they needed to stay in the drawer until Easter was actually here.  So yesterday and today since it was slightly cooler, I broke out the socks:

The top pair are new this year.  I think Mom bought me the second pair, but I could be remembering that wrong.  I love how bright they both are.

So, I just looked back last year's Easter post, and I'd actually forgotten about these shoes, which is crazy.  See what I mean about loving colorful shoes for Easter?

Happy Easter (season), everyone!  Please go eat some chocolate for me.  I can eat it again, but we need to spread the calories around...