Easter

We Mattsons have been absent in our blogging recently.  Mostly this is because we seem to spend a lot of time chasing and cleaning up after a certain little man who loves to make huge messes and because our internet has become agonizingly slow. It takes forever to upload a single picture, let alone many.  We are hopeful that our Obama internet coming this summer takes care of our rural Minnesota connection issues...but we will see.  For a while there was a lot of orange wire going up the road, but there has not been much action recently.  

However, there has been sunshine...and the snow is melted. The big birds are coming back to our little lake and the little ones have been able to spend a lot of March and April outside, so things are good.  Gus requires being outside for every day after daycare, even though he gets to spend most of his days at Nancy's playing outside. He loves running around the yard whacking golf balls and baseballs, he cries and cries when he has to come in...poor guy.  We can already see how this summer is going to be...lots of fun! 

These 3$ lacrosse sticks have been a big hit this spring. I am pretty sure they are completely broken now, but Maarit and Gus had fun trying to launch the balls and catch them in the little nets, which is actually really tricky.

Our resident eagle has been excited to see the swans and geese return. Justin took these pictures when he was sitting in a tree in our backyard hunting the water birds.

We are waiting for the big groups of loons and ducks to come yet, but the geese and swans and different migrating ducks have been fun to see this spring.  These were taken on a family paddle boat ride over Easter break.  We were hoping to get close to the swans, but they were not out that day.

Our Easter break was short and sweet. We spent a lot of time out side on our beach, even though the temperatures were really cold.  Gus and Maarit seem not to mind at all that the sand is freezing.

We spent a night at the Duluth water park and a day at the Duluth zoo attending an egg hunt with the Erickson family, but sadly I had forgotten my camera at home.  Maarit had her face painted like a tiger at the zoo though and she was very proud.

Egg dyeing was an adventure this year.  My countertop was bright pink after and the kids hands were colored for a few days. Maarit really wanted to create multi-colored beautiful eggs and Gus was into cracking them and dumping the dye out.

The bunny hid the baskets and eggs outside in the freezing cold this year.  He was brave.  All the eggs froze and one was lost to a squirrel or some other little critter which stressed Maarit a bit.  

Overall we had a very quiet holiday with lots of play time and a long nap. The best part of our day was when we talked to Uncle Bubs and found out that he and Shanna are expecting their first baby in October.  We were all very excited to hear that news! More cousins! Hooray!!!!