Before I get to some Easter pics, here are some pics from the Passover celebration at Sarah’s preschool!

And… a pic of Sarah in her adorable panda robe (thanks, Uncle Tim and Aunt Liz!).

We were leaving for our road trip to Virginia on Easter this year, so we decided to have a quick easter egg hunt in our backyards on Saturday!  Here are the kids forcing out a “cheese” before we let them loose in the backyard.

Yum.  There was more chocolate on Sunday for breakfast, and then we hit the road for Williamsburg!

Apart from the storm, it’s been a pretty uneventful month.  Sarah enjoyed some bacon.

The kids got some new lego sets.

We went out to Mt. Fuji Steakhouse for dinner one night.  Sarah was pretty scared of the flames, but Blaine seemed into it.

Sarah held this turtle at school!  I was amazed because all last year she always refused to touch animals at preschool and at the Rye Nature Center.

Blaine admiring his new hoodie.

… and the new pajamas they picked out.

I’ve never been happy with the results cooking a whole rack of lamb in the oven so I tried it out in the sous vide.  I was pretty impressed with the results, very even and perfectly cooked, though I’d try to get more of a crust during the searing next time.

Sarah was invited to a birthday party at the Rock Club, a rock climbing gym in New Rochelle.  So we took a family outing there to see if we could get her warmed up for the party.  Both kids were hesitant but we eventually got them in a harness and climbing a little bit.  Andrew and I had fun, though!

We had another snow day on 3/21, while Andrew was in India.  And this time we got some actual snow — 6 to 8 inches I’d guess.

Here we are at the actual rock climbing birthday party, a huge affair for six birthday kids.  The hosts were kind enough to let Blaine tag along since Andrew was away.

The highlight for Blaine was the magic show during pizza/cake.  He was dying laughing!

After that we went to another party at a playground, and then on to swimming lessons.  Sarah was proud to wear goggles for the first time.

The weekend was rounded out with a third birthday party (Blaine was invited to this one) on Sunday!  Phew.  We’ve all been getting over some rough colds, as well, so it was a pretty exhausting time.

The following week, Blaine’s Kindergarten classroom had a little party to share their reading and writing.  Blaine read us this book he wrote and illustrated, called “Bee and Toaster”.

Winter storm Riley hit on Friday, 3/2, with tons of rain and wind.  I guess at some point it became a nor’easter?  We lost power at roughly 1:30 in the afternoon, and went into the basement to find that it had flooded with 1-2 inches of water.  Yuck!

Sarah decided it was nap time.

We were debating what to do about dinner when our power conveniently came back on about 5pm.  We took the opportunity to turn up the heat and fire up the microwave to make a spread of leftovers for dinner, and then lost power again just in time for a cozy candlelit dinner.

We made sure everyone had enough blankets and figured we’d be fine for the night, but the next day we decided to get out of the house and headed into the city.  First stop, brunch at Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side.

Then, on to the Museum of Natural History.  We checked out a special exhibit on the senses, and also made sure to see the T Rex and Triceratops, of course.

Sarah has not been into being photographed lately, so many pictures feature her angrily running out of frame, like this.

After the museum we went to Shake Shack for lunch.

And then to a playground, though it was a chilly day.  At that point we’d checked with all our neighbors and determined the power was still out, so we decided it was time to find a hotel.  Andrew found a room at the Hilton Stamford Executive so we stopped at home for spare clothes and drove out.  The line to check in was insane!  We finally got our room and then had a slow dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was overwhelmed by people whose power was out.

This may have been the first time our whole family slept in one room!  We had a king bed and a pullout couch for the kids, which meant it was not our most restful night.  The next morning we had a tasty breakfast at the Stamford Diner.

Then we went back out to Larchmont for a birthday party.

With the power still out, and no room at the hotel we’d stayed at the previous night, we moved over to the Hyatt House in White Plains.  It was a better fit for us with suites and mini-kitchens.  We moved all our perishables into the fridge and freezer there, and ordered Chinese for dinner.  We all slept better not being in the same room.

The hotel had a shuttle bus to the train station to get Andrew to work (it was Monday morning at this point), and a buffet breakfast that the kids and I enjoyed.  Sadly, the Hyatt House was all booked up for Monday night with business travelers so we had to pack everything up again to head back out to Larchmont.  We were only 30 minutes late for school!

At this point ConEd was giving vastly conflicting information about when our power would be back on — Tuesday?  Thursday?  — so I decided to pick up some dry ice ConEd was supposedly giving out in New Rochelle.  I got there and found out the dry ice truck had broken down somewhere in the Bronx!  So I moved all our perishables to DeCicco’s, our local grocery store, which had kindly offered to store people’s food for them.  Thanks, DeCicco’s!  The Hilton Stamford was available again that night, and we were able to get two adjoining rooms this time.  I took the kids to Dinosaur BBQ for dinner.  Here’s Blaine pondering his coloring page, asking “Are they cooking other dinosaurs?”

We took a pulled pork sandwich to go and picked up Andrew at the train station.  That night we got word from our neighbors that the power had come back on!  Woo hoo!  The next morning Andrew took the train in for work and the kids and I had one last hotel breakfast.

After dropping the kids at school I went home to give our fridge a serious cleaning and get rid of all the food we’d left there that was bad.  I also went to DeCicco’s to pick up what I’d dropped off, and stock up for the big snow storm that was predicted for the following day.  The kids’ school was cancelled that evening.  As it turned out very little snow accumulated so it felt like a let down.  We spent the day getting the basement dried out.  The only other excitement was this tree at our corner which started to lean precariously toward the street as a result of all the precipitation.

But someone came and cut it down before it actually did any damage.

The end!

I had the chance to visit Sarah’s preschool two days in a row, on 3/1 for the Purim celebration, and on 3/2 for Shabbat.

I’ll admit I don’t remember the exact story behind Purim, but the kids were encouraged to wear costumes so Sarah broke out her firefighter costume!

There was also a little carnival, and I volunteered to help out.  They put all the parent volunteers at the face painting station, which I’d never done before!  Always fun to try something new.  Here I am painting Sarah’s face, which I believe was a first for her, as well.

I was pretty pleased with the result, though I have had practice with drawing fire themed tableaux.  The biggest challenge was a little boy dressed as a policeman who wanted a “whistle” painted on his cheek.  I did my best…  Then Sarah and I played at the school playground.

The next day I’d signed up to visit Sarah’s class for Shabbat.  Sarah got to be the person of honor and drink from the cup and lay her hand on the challah.  The challah is Sarah’s favorite part of Shabbat!