Adorable April

A few things to adore about the month of April...

• Babies, babies and more babies!

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• Playing patty cake with Olivia's toes.

• The catchlights my camera always finds in Olivia's eyes.
• The perfect peaks in her Gerber Baby mouth.

• Learning to crawl using those buff baby arms.

• The way she easily drifted off to sleep while nestled snug in her Papa's arms.
• Cupcake jammies...do they come in my size?

• Henry's newborn kicking, stretching and playing.
• Listening to the soft sounds of a cooing baby boy.

•  Henry's blue eyes and his ever growing eyelashes.

• Tub time with babies. Cass and I tag team the two of them...it takes us quite a while to bathe and dress 2 little ones.

•  Olivia's curl.

•  Swaddling up a freshly washed baby and breathing in the deliciousness.

•  Remembering the bliss of carrying a sleeping baby off to bed.

•  Armfuls of my grandbabies.

• The contented look on both of their faces.

• The way Olivia plays with her Uncle Chet.

• Watching my daughter embrace motherhood completely.
• Babies are simply adorable...in every single way!

Introducing Her Royal Highness...

I'm bringing home a baby honeybee
won't my Mommy be so proud of me!

Extremely cold and long...winters in our Northern town can be hard on everyone, including girls trying to keep warm in their hives. Sadly, we lost Queen Caroline and her entire hive to an early cold snap. Lady Gaga's hive was knocked over by uninvited house guests...don't get me started about those pesky elk. And yet...somehow Lady Gaga and the rest of the hive survived!

Dean, anxious to bring his bee population up in numbers brought home a new queen plus 10,000 of her closest bee girlfriends to move into Caroline's hive.

Once moved into the new hive, the girls need time to settle in. Then cross your fingers to make sure they stay.

This is the queen's royal coach that Dean is removing from the hive. The queen lives in this tiny box for the first few days in the hive so she begins to smell like the hive. The girlfriends efficiently eat away the small sugar plug in one end of the royal coach and free her!

Slowly, Dean pulls frame after frame out of the hive to check on the progress of the girls. And things are looking good...the hive appears to be healthy and growing.

But to be sure...he will need to find the queen. It is quite literally like looking for a needle in a haystack. One queen among 10,000 girlfriends.

Wait what's this...could it be? Look just below the yellow stick. She's longer and bigger than the other girls.

Introducing... Queen Kate Middleton...The Duchess of Honeybridge.

And there are many buzzy days ahead for Queen Kate!

Fortunately the bee master had a scientific assistant for the day.

Royal Shenanigans

Pip pip...cheerio (to be read in an English accent)!

To celebrate the Royal Wedding...

 join us for a spot of tea, and perhaps a very pleasing English scone.

Don your favorite hat...

 bring along a cheeky playmate...

 because it's Olivia's first tea party!

Hip Hip Hooray...three cheers for Prince William and Princess Kate. 

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Build It And They Will Come

The men folk are in the midst of a big project here.

Starting in the garage...because Spring has not sprung in our little Northern city.

Oh yeah...The teenager's first time with power tools!

This shot cracks me up...is that Chet, or scary Ninja dude with a drill gun!

The building plans started out as scratches on graph paper...

with careful attention to every detail.

Oh yeah...first time with an electric saw.

Because, if you build it...they will come!

Oh by the way, General Tsao says hurry up boys...the box is getting crowded! Mother Clucker has put on quite a few grams around the middle.

The Hunt

We don't always follow traditions closely at The Garlick Press...sometimes we veer off madly in the wrong direction.

 We start off with the usual Easter egg dying.

 The teenager made me the pink and lime green one! I'm a pink egg kind of girl.

We'll usually have a traditional ham and smoked turkey dinner...

including a plethora of desert treats like coconut cupcakes, brown-butter brownies and chocolate dipped marshmallow bunnies.

Warning...sharp veering ahead...

 Easter bonnet...

gangsta' bonnet!

 And because we're new grandparents...a new tradition.

Welcome to Nana and Papa's first annual Easter egg hunt.

 Is that the Easter bunny I see hiding those eggs...or is that some bunny else?

I know...I know...neither one of the grand babies can walk

or even pick up their own Easter eggs.

Look closely at Izzy...she's trying to sneak an egg from Olivia's basket.

Even the teenager got a little excited about Easter this year. 

There were grand baby eggs...and eggs just for the adult hunters.

Let's be honest, all the eggs were for the adults, since neither baby is allowed to have candy yet.

Ask Bob why he aced out his wife trying to get the prized silver Easter egg.

Gumming on a Kit Kat bar went well for Olivia until she actually broke open the wrapper.

It was a lovely Easter afternoon...spent soaking up the babies that are springing up around us..

Apparently she didn't like Peter Cottontail.

Easter egg hunting can make boys very sleepy...

and finally...Henry's out!

See we can be fairly traditional when we try...

and we're off again!