Easter Saturday

Today we had a busy and fun day.  First we went down to USCL for a "tailgate party" for the baseball game.  We weren't staying for the game since we had to go to an Easter egg hunt afterwards but we went for the "tailgate" fun.  A few families got together, we all brought our lunch and had a picnic with the kids--our current version of tailgating---oh, how times change...before kids we wouldn't make the game for very different reasons. ;)

I didn't feel like making sandwiches for the picnic so I opted to pick up veggie sushi rolls from the new Publix for the boys.  They love sushi and it's a rare treat, especially for Gavin since he's the one that can ask for it by name and looks forward to it.

 Notice Liam stuffing a whole piece in his mouth.  And yes, they ate ALL but two pieces and Gavin ate all his ginger.  That boy loves ginger.  
 The (new) Dean brought over some souvenirs for the kids.  They got USCL pens, sunglasses, water bottles and "cones".  I love these glasses and was happy that Gavin was happy to wear them.

I didn't know that the Dean would bring eggs for an egg hunt for the kids so Gavin and Liam got to look for little baseball eggs around the outskirt of the field.  Although Liam didn't care much about the eggs (he didn't know there were treats inside), he hung out in the lounge chairs of other kids while they searched for eggs.  It was a nice event.  Because of the layout of the field and fencing, we actually got to socialize with the other adults and not have to worry about Liam or Gavin running away or being out of sight.  They could run around in the grass and be relatively safe so I had a nice break and met some new people and had good adult conversation.

Nick took Liam down to see the baseball field while the players were warming up and he loved it.  He was running around behind home plate and throwing the baseball to the coach and other players.  The coach even let him keep a baseball.  When Gavin saw it, of course he was jealous and I took him to the field so he could run around behind home plate and throw a few balls too.  The coach played with him as well and taught him a 'not so nice' thing--there was a player on the ground that was being stretched by another coach and while the player had one leg up and one leg down while laying on the ground, the coach tried to get Gavin to roll the ball toward the player's crotch area.  I was not happy about that.  At first Gavin wouldn't do it, he wasn't sure what to do but after the coach did it himself a couple of times, I heard Gavin say "I want to do it now" and I looked back at Nick and Nick said "it's fine."  Well, I don't know about that.  I was really scared he wasn't going to roll it, but actually throw it at the poor guy (who coincidentally was one of Nick's students).  Luckily Gavin never rolled it strong enough to even get near the guy and he didn't talk about it afterwards as if it was a fun thing so I hope he forgets about it and doesn't get any ideas.

I tried to get pictures of the boys in the field but I was holding Ellie so they didn't turn out so good.

After the "tailgate", we came back towards Fort Mill to Gavin's favorite playground where a church was hosting an Easter Egg hunt again.  This is the same event we went to last year that was pretty awesome.  The egg hunt was scheduled for 2:30pm and we got there at 2:34pm so I was pretty sure we had missed it.  But when we got there we hear the loudspeakers saying "the egg hunt will start in ONE minute."  We were parking and Liam and Ellie had fallen asleep so Nick grabbed Gavin and his basket and ran to the field.  By the time they made it over to the field where the egg hunt was taking place, all the eggs were gone.  BUT, a volunteer from the church overheard Nick talking to Gavin about the eggs being gone and she gave Gavin a little bag of eggs just for him.  So nice of her.  Nick tells me that when the volunteer gave the bag to Gavin they had a conversation that went like this:
Vol:  Do you like candy?
Gavin:  Yeah, I like candy...but I like real food better.  [that's my boy!]
Vol:  oh yeah. what is your favorite real food?
Gavin:  Sushi  [of course, since he'd just had it]
Vol:  I had sushi last night.  what's your favorite kind of sushi?
Gavin:  I really like the ginger.

We've been having a lot of conversations about "real food" vs. "junk" lately.  I'm trying to teach him what foods are healthy and why we need to eat lots of those versus the unhealthy stuff and as you can see some of it is sticking. :)

Gavin eating the tootsie roll treat

 I later joined Nick and Gavin so Liam could have some fun too.  They had bouncehouses and of course both boys were looking forward to those.

 Here Gavin and Liam are in the "5 and under" bouncehouse.

  I was afraid Liam was going to be banned from the bouncehouse because they would only let them bounce for a few minutes and they would say "time's up" and all the kids would get out EXCEPT Liam.   So, below you see the empty bouncehouse and Nick trying to grab Liam.

 He did this every time and Nick had to go in to get him each time.  One of the times, Nick just stuck his head in and said "Liam, come here" and Liam stood in the middle of the bouncehouse and said "NO" and kept bouncing.  Another time, when we asked him to get out he just kept saying "bounce, bounce, bounce."    Liam knew he had some control here because Nick couldn't go all the way in to get him.  Everyone around was laughing at him/us.