Happy Easter

We had an eventful Easter "season" starting this past Thursday with Easter festivities with the Stampfer kids and then a busy day today with looking for hidden eggs and the basket from the Easter Bunny, church, an egg hunt at church, Easter dinner, and an egg hunt at dinner. The girls were exhausted and Kailee barely napped today, but they were amazing well-behaved! Poor Kailee crashed within seconds every time we got in the car, but would wake up when we arrived at the next place and couldn't miss out on anything!

The Easter Bunny at the MacDonald house hides the baskets and leaves clues leading to the basket. He also hides eggs with money in them (and this year, a few My Little Ponies from the Ponyville collection). It's a combination of traditions from how Leevi and I grew up. Hailey did great with her clues and found her basket in the bathtub and Kailee dug right into her basket. We hurried to get ready for church and even got to squeeze in some webcamming with Leevi (he's in Bagram for the next few days!!!)















If you look close there is a rainbow near the middle right of the picture just above the fence!

And lastly...video snippets from the day...

Kailee Laughing....

Easter Party!

We had an early Easter celebration with the Stampfer kids on Thursday evening...dying eggs, an egg hunt, and then dinner. We will go to church with them tomorrow and then to a friend's house for Easter dinner. Hailey is excited for the Easter Bunny's visit tonight (more pics to post tomorrow!)

Mother of the Year Award

Today I awarded myself the "Mother of the Year" honor for losing my child while I was napping. O.K., so not exactly, but...

Kailee was down for a nap (safe in her crib...didn't lose her!) and Hailey was playing My Little Ponies in her room. I told her I was going to lay down for a bit...I was just dozing off when Hailey came in and snuggled next to me and fell asleep (she had gotten up at 6:15am and she's still fighting a cold, so I was glad she joined me) We had been asleep for about 30 min, when Hailey sat up and muttered something about needing her whistle. ??? I could tell she was kind of out of it (and I was too from being asleep) but she got out of bed anyway. I dozed back off and then woke maybe 10 minutes later and realized that she hadn't come back and I didn't hear her in her room. I checked around upstairs and didn't see her and then checked around downstairs AND DIDN'T SEE HER. I didn't get panicky because a.) the house is child-proofed and b.) there are child locks on the doors leading outside so there was no way she could have gotten out. I assumed, given her groggy state, that she had fallen back asleep somewhere...it was just a matter of where! After checking around again upstairs, I was headed down to the garage when I decided to check the downstairs bathroom...the door was closed, but the light was on...


Poor thing...there was pee in the toliet (I'm assuming that's what woke her up in the first place) I just left her there and she got up maybe 30 min. later!

Kailee girl...

I try to sneak into Kailee's room if she's awake in the night or up early from a nap and give her back her pacifier. Recently she's been waiting for me.....she's learned how to pull down her crib bumpers and peek out. This is how she greeted Hailey and I this morning when she woke up.

Photo shoot at KoOlina

After my only halfway good experience with Hailey a few weeks back when we had the girls portraits done, I was really tempted to take them back in their Easter dresses for one more pose together (how can you pass up over 30 pics for $5.99), but then I thought I'd try some pics of them at KoOlina myself and see how they went. I'm SO happy with the way they turned out and SO happy that it was stress-free and Hailey was well behaved. It was a perfect day and you really can't go wrong with a gorgeous background like that lagoon. My friend, Rachael, offered to come with me to help make the girls smile while I took the pics, but then the night before I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and jump in the pics too. I'm always the one with the camera and don't have very many pictures with my babies. We passed the camera around (and the babies) and got some amazing pictures. Hailey was happy to be allowed to play in the water and would come over for a pose every few minutes. Kailee ate a ton of sand (and had two big sand poops over the next few days!)
















We hired a professional photographer in Oct. 07 (when we thought Leevi was going to deploy to Afghan., but then didn't) to take family pictures at that exact same spot(before Kailee was around!) and overall I was pretty disappointed...I felt that she didn't capture the background (which makes the picture all the more stunning) Here are a few from then...there were hundreds taken, but these are only the ones I really liked...I'm just complaining...:)

Locks of Love

My hair got ridiculously long when I was pregnant with Kailee...and now she's 6 months old and I was still complaining. I looked into a couple of places that did hair donations...Locks of Love was the one that came to mind, but you have to donate at least 10 inches. I found a Pantene one that only has to be 8. Once we actually did the measuring, we realized I could have the needed 10 plus more! It's a little shorter than I wanted, but I still like it and it was definitely overdue for a good chop. I love the layers, but will probably let it grow out a little longer. A 13 inch ponytail will get put in the mail tomorrow! :)

The Girls at 6 months

Sorry it looks a little goofy...I didn't take the pictures out of the frames.

6th month portraits of Kailee and Hailey

Say a prayer for us...

We just got awesome news from Leevi that he might be home before Christmas! Since he left early on the Advanced party to Afghanistan his group will be the first to return (we knew that), but I guess they are pushing to get them home a month early and since it'll be so close to Christmas, they make even more of an effort! As of now, he's slated to leave by Dec. 15th. Obviously that is SO far away and obviously this is the military we are talking about, but keep that thought in your prayers for us. He is still planning on taking his R&R leave for Kailee's 1st birthday, so if we can just make it to September, December will be just around the corner! :)

Things are going pretty well for him in Afghanistan. He's been put in charge of training a National Guard Unit that arrived from Nebraska. He really liked it because he wasn't behind a desk doing power point slides and is doing "army things". Apparently the higher ups liked his performance and have asked him to go to a different post in Afgh. and do it again! He's staying really busy. I try to send him a picture everyday of the girls and we hear from him everyday by email and a couple times a week by phone. I'm just as busy with work and with the girls...time seems to be going by at a considerable pace!

Tidbits from Hailey Part III

A few random thoughts from Hailey.....

*When we were trying to webcam Leevi the screen keep freezing, so we'd only see a picture of him instead of live video. I keep saying to Leevi, "nope, you are frozen again" and Hailey said, "Daddy needs gloves because he's freezing!" Ha! :)

*Hailey got an adorable swimsuit set for her birthday (suit, hat, and wrap-skirt)...we put it on yesterday to go to the waterpark and she keep complaining about it while I was getting dressed. Finally she came to me and showed me her butt...the suit has such a skimpy cut for a kid's suit that it kept giving her a wedgie while she played. I tried pulling it down a bit, but it keep riding up. Hailey then said, "My butt is too big!" :) Wow, isn't she too young to already have a butt complex!?

*Hailey was playing with Kailee and "tickling" her with the new stuffed dog, Missy, she had gotten that day (her reward for giving up the pacifier). Hailey was being too rough (although Kailee was laughing and really didn't seem to mind!) I asked her to be gentle and she did it again so I said, "Hailey, if you do that one more time I'm going to take her back to the store!" Hailey replied, "Who? My dog or Kailee?" :)

*Leevi was typically the parent to take Hailey to the beach/waterpark when he was here...I'd take advantage of an empty house and get things done. Yesterday I pulled the beach towels out the closet for the waterpark and set them on the railing to take downstairs with us. When I was getting ready Hailey came running in with one of the beach towels and said, "Mommy, this smells like Daddy! Smell it!" :( sniff, sniff, tear, tear. :)