Weekend Adventures: Easter Egg Hunt 2010, Garage Walls, Cookies & More

Ever have one of those weekends where you feel like you need a weekend just to recover from your weekend?!

Well, that pretty much sums up our last weekend! Only in a good way, of course! We tried to cram as much as possible in this weekend as we could.

Like drywalling our garage. And attending a local Easter egg hunt. And making/decorating Easter cookies. And coloring Easter eggs. And.......

First up, the Great Easter Egg Hunt of 2010 (held at our local school). The best part about this "hunt" was seeing all our old and new friends with their children at the "hunt".

Ava was pretty nervous around Mr. Easter Bunny. Can't blame her. But those Tootsie Rolls in his basket soon got her over her fear.
The girls decided they wanted to wear the bunny ears their Oma sent them. I think they're perfect for the occasion!

Look at all those eggs!
Woo hoo! The girls got to trade their plastic eggs for bags of goodies, candy and stuff. A girl's delight!
Annika really wants to find a tree in our forest that she can climb. This is a little oak tree that is in our backyard. It's not quite suited to climbing but then again none of the trees in Bristling Acres is really suited for climbing. It's not called Bristling Acres for nothing!
She managed to get part way up with the help of one of her chairs. Okay...now the garage effort. Now perhaps you might remember the car troubles I posted about last month? No? Sadly, I can't forget. We spent 6-1/2 weeks without our less than six month old car because A MOUSE CHEWED A WIRE (wire harness had to be replaced). Meaning mice were in our garage. Mice=bad. They had found all kinds of ways to get into our garage and destroy stuff.

Also, now here's kind of the sad part, look in the photo below and you'll see that the dogs have an enclosure in the garage (it leads to the big dog yard). Well, we have a super old dog. Super duper old Mr. Super Pooper. He's our 14-1/2 year old lab who in spite of his age seems very happy about life. The problem? He poops EVERYWHERE! When he's eating, sleeping, etc. Just imagine what that enclosure was like and how the garage smelled and what the dust in the garage was made of (and oh YES, everything in the garage was COATED with a layer of DUST).

Change=good.

So, in honor of the mice and the dogs we dry walled most of the garage this past weekend. Let me just saying that heaving up 5/8" dry wall = PAIN.

Before....(with dog enclosure; not going to show you the really nasty stuff)
It's a start!WOW! Doesn't that look different?
Some how all that stuff has to fit back in the garage.... (most of it will be on shelves and hooks that were taken down in order to dry wall the garage). Lovely sight, no? LOL!

The backwall finished (unused drywall are leaning against the wall behind that shelf; oh my...were those heavy to move!). Now we'll need to tape and mud (least favorite part of the project) and paint. I think I'll paint the doors turquoise. What do you think? Mark only wants white walls- or as he put it, "any color as long as it's white". I think we'll end up putting the dog enclosure back up and we also intend to put in a concrete patio out the dog door to cut down on dust.
We've had one consistent request from Ava these past few weeks...to fly a kite. She got her wish this weekend!.....

And boy, the wind was really helping us.
Ava nearly getting blown away while holding the kite. Okay, perhaps the wind wasn't that strong.
A bird? A plane? No....our kite! (our old Christmas tree in the foreground)
EASTER COOKIES!!!!!!!

I love making treats. I've got a bad sweet tooth that gets me into trouble. (I should find it and have it pulled!) I really wanted to make decorated sugar cookies for Easter but I've yet to find a great sugar cookie recipe. I Googled "great tasting sugar cookie recipe" and I found these on Simply Recipes. I used the first cookie recipe they posted. By the way, I've made several recipes from that site and have yet to be disappointed. Hi, my name is Astrid and I'm a Recipe Junkie. There, I said it. I really can't help myself. But, these really were the best sugar cookies I've ever made. I subbed almond extract for the vanilla. Yum!
Then I used the frosting recipe from MomsWhoThink website (plus they've got the same cookie recipe posted...so that means it has to be good, right?) AND they've got helpful hints for baking those cookies. I added raspberry flavoring instead of vanilla to my frosting. Oh so good. Truly. I wish I didn't have a sweet tooth.At least the girls and I had fun decorating our cookies in rather obnoxious -err- fun colors!
My Easter Bunny cookies.

Please excuse me...I think I need to eat a cookie. And then jog 3 miles. Or 10. :)

Whew...and now I think I'll go to sleep for the entire week. (Oh, how I wish!!!!)

Shared with....

Tasty Tuesday.