Happy Spring!

The first half of April has been so busy and I've got the pictures to prove it. Okay, some of this is from the end of March, but the majority of this will be from April. So far in April, I've hosted girls' night, where we made Ukrainian Easter eggs and went to a Grease sing-a-long at the Opera House; the Triduum and Easter just passed us. We hosted dinner at the Newman Center for students who didn't go home for the weekend. We had only a few people, but it was a really nice dinner. April also brought us a freak snow storm.

The girls' night was fun. We started out making the Easter eggs, then ran to the Opera House to see Grease. Not that we've never seen it before, but it's a classic! They had a nice pre-show where they had some trivia and taught people how to hand-jive. I got up on stage and did the hand-jive against some guy, competing for the best hand-jive. The crowd determined that we tied, but my girls said that he didn't know what he was doing. I got a free movie ticket out of it and it was fun. :) We had to come back to my house afterwards and finish our eggs. Here's a picture of the finished products. All of the eggs started out as plain white, except for one. The dark green one started out as a really light brown egg. I didn't have enough white eggs for everyone to do two, so my second one was a brown one. I think it turned out pretty awesome despite that.

The next week brought the freak snowstorm. I know family and friends in Ohio experienced it as well. It was a bummer of a storm. We didn't get much snow, not nearly as much as forecasted, but the storm did prevent my sister and her kids from visiting for the day. They had never been here and I was looking forward to them visiting. They even started to come, but 15 minutes into the trip, they had seen 2 accidents and were experiencing white-out conditions, so they turned around. I know they were looking forward to visiting too, but I know they'll try to come again, probably over the summer. Here's a picture from that storm.

Back at the end of March, some friends took us to a basilica in south Buffalo. It was Our Lady of Victory. The church was built by Fr. Baker, who ran a pretty famous orphanage at that location. I've heard from lots of people that many families would threaten to drop their kids of at Fr. Baker's if they were being bad. Tim Russert also refers to this in his book "Big Russ and Me", which I am reading right now. The basilica was absolutely beautiful! We took some pictures of it, but plan on taking people there if they visit us and we're looking for something somewhat indoor to do. Here are a few pictures.

The end of March/beginning of April brought the beginning signs of spring! We have crocuses galore around here, all kinds of shades of purple and even some yellow. There's even a blue flower that I'm not familiar with. Here are some beautiful pictures of them.

I almost forgot! At the end of March, I spent a random weekend at my parents' house when my sister and her kids were there. My parents' also watched my other sister's kids for the evening as well. Here are some pictures of my nieces and nephews. They're all so cute!

I've captured Tyler and threatened to take him home with me.

Mommy and Gretchen laughing together.

Grandma and Gretchen.

Grandpa and Samantha.

Gretchen wondering what's going on...

Tyler the ham and Gretchen the model?

I LOVE this picture, can you get any cuter?

Mommy and Tyler time

This is the only picture Mikey would let me take of him, but I didn't want to exclude him from my post. Can you believe he's 10 already!

I always think I have nothing to write about in my posts, but as you can see this one is so long that I guess I was way overdue for a post. I am seriously going to try to post more often. Happy Easter and happy spring, Everyone!