A Pirate Adventure

You remember Pirate Redbeard, right? He comes to visit our house quite often, but recently he's been trying to keep one step ahead of the King's Navy and we haven't seen much of him of late.

Fortunately for my little boys, he left a letter and a map with Pop and they had themselves a grand pirate adventure on Easter Sunday.

The boys couldn't wait to read the letter and see what was in store for them.

To get started, they had to give the secret signal (making a spyglass out of their hands). As Pop read the letter, the boys were told to follow certain steps and then they were given a map. The first step was assigning jobs. Will was the navigator and Henry was the helmsman.

The second step was finding Pop's compass. Pop unrolled the map

and the boys studied it very carefully.

Here are the map and Pirate Redbeard's letter. The detail is incredible!

The third step was to find the poop deck at the stern of the house, and the fourth was to get gloves from Nana "who is used to dealing with pirates." You can see Henry dutifully wore his huge gloves throughout the entire adventure!

Let the treasure hunt begin!

Checking the compass.

Checking the map and their position.
Secret signal (hard if you're wearing huge gloves!).

I think they found what Pirate Redbeard buried in the backyard!!

Will got the bag!

Heading back to the house at full speed!

Inside, they opened up the big bag and

found two boxes full of

TREASURE!! We're rich, rich, rich!
Secret signal again.
THANK YOU, Nana and Pop, for such an amazing pirate adventure!

Easter Weekend

We had a busy Easter weekend! We spent Saturday up in Kingwood with my parents.

The boys loved their Easter egg hunt and especially the bags of jelly beans that came home with us!

Our Easter morning at home was pretty quiet. We had our usual pre-church breakfast at our fave restaurant, Skeeters. Love it! Normally the place is packed with firefighters and the parking lot looks like this: But Easter Sunday was pretty tame. We were the first ones there! The boys enjoyed their French toast.
Too bad they don't have oatmeal for me! I ate mine in the car on the way there and can't wait til my jaw heals enough for me to enjoy another Skeeters breakfast!
These are the Easter baskets the Easter bunny left at our house. I stuffed them full of of dot-to-dot books, paint with water books, a CD, Play-doh stampers and a sticker craft project -- plus one chocolate bunny!

The boys discovered their Easter baskets after church. Will wanted to do his pirate sticker project right away,

but Henry just wanted to eat his chocolate bunny (of course!).

After lunch and quiet time, we headed over to Nana and Pop's for the afternoon. There was another Easter egg hunt. Henry waited patiently by the back door.

And then they were off!

The boys found some bubble whistles in the backyard.
And then they found some jellybean eggs and had to take a quick snack break.What a beautiful day!After the egg hunt, it was KP duty for Gene and Uncle Amadeu.This kid never stops eating! I think this was his third snack of the afternoon.A picture of me with my sweetie! My Gene and his mama.The Easter table complete with yummy pea soup for me (thanks, Gene, for making it!). Dessert!Telling stories.Henry and his daddy and Baby Brown Bear!Uncle Amadeu Aunt Helen It wouldn't be a holiday without some magic tricks. Will tried pulling some coins out of Pop's ear. I think he needs a bit more practice! Henry tried it too but came up empty-handed!Happy Easter!