Jennifer's 365 Project

A co-worker is retiring this month and today was her retirement party. She's a super nice and friendly person and I'm excited for her to enjoy all of her favorite things anytime of the day she wants to.

We set up a small aquarium yesterday afternoon in Quinn's room. I loved having fish as a kid and had a small 5 gallon one in my room before I moved out. So far the cat seems indifferent about it.

 Today was such a busy day! We headed out to Holland for a small comic festival.
 We stopped to see Comfort and Adam.
 And Corinne Roberts.
The weather ended up being much nicer than it was supposed to be (and what tiny amount of snow there was had melted) so we stopped by the Wyoming Spring Carnival.
 We alternated rides with Quinn.
And he rode his first rollercoaster by himself.
He had an amazing time and wanted to see everything, even if some rides looked a little "too scary". Most rides he was tall enough to ride, so it was a great afternoon out in the sunshine for us all.

Today is the last weekend for a free family craft and petting zoo in Coopersville. Since it's cold and supposed to snow later, we decided an indoor activity would be best.

Quinn made an ant out of a sock.
 And was able to visit all kinds of animals.
 And sit on an old tractor.
 He had so much fun bouncing between the animal pens and craft stations.
 The rats were super fun and tickled him a ton.
He was quite proud of his crafts - a caterpillar and an ant made out of a sock.

Tonight I'm out to see Avengers. It's a 3 hour long movie and since Chris and I still take turns if we want to see the same movie (so someone is home with Quinn), it's easier to try to get it done before the weekend and have an entire half day eaten up by an overlong movie.

Chris is out seeing Avengers and this little guy and I are watching a Batman movie and dressing up.

It's finally starting to be nice in the morning so I went for a run before work. It's nice when I get up and the whole household is asleep - makes it easier to sneak out and do things.

This thing is almost a year old. No flower buds but lots of leaves and different shoots coming off the main body.

 Today is another beautiful and warm day! I went out early before work to run.
And at lunch I hung out at the park and read. In the evening we did some yard work. Since its supposed to rain and thunder tomorrow I'm trying to get as much sunshine as I can!

It's been a long day, even with the little one sleeping in. He had an amazing time in the morning and was very excited to bite off his bunny's ears. We discovered that the hollow bunny he had did, in fact, have solid ears.

I was not pleased.
Chris surprised me with an impromptu basket. He's always making me something for holidays and I'm terrible at remembering to always reciprocate.
We enjoyed pancakes. Quinn still enjoys doodles on them, so I try to surprise him with something different once in awhile.
 We spent time at the park while it was sunny and 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
And soon it was creeping into the 60s and then 70s.
We cleaned up a lot of the yard, which was nice.
 Quinn and I ended up spending nearly 6 hours outside, soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the warm weather. It's been a great weekend and I'm sad to see it end so quickly.

 We spent the day on the east side of the state, celebrating Easter with family.
 Quinn had an amazing time, and it was good to catch up with everyone.
We did walk away with 6 chocolate bunnies, a ton of peeps and a tote of jellybeans that didn't make it into the photo. We are so set on candy for awhile.

We took a long walk this evening. A few blocks from home he decided he needed a break and sat down on the sidewalk.

It was a slow walk back home.

I had an all day work function today, and at the end I was able to snag some balloons to bring home to the family. There's a little one who is going to be pumped to see these.

 We had a good time coloring eggs this evening.
Stickers are always a hit. Who doesn't love to coat eggs in stickers?

Came home to this.

 WHY?!
It mostly melted half way through the day, so our trip to the library wasn't super wet but it was still chilly.

They shot footage yesterday while we were at the convention for Good Morning America. My mother-in-law is a huge fan, so Quinn and I went over when they asked in case they ended up using the footage. They used this clip only, a 1 second pan of a ride we sat in. So that segment ran this morning.
We relaxed a fair amount in the hotel, mostly because Chris and I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep.
The forecast shifted dramatically from what it was on Friday when we were planning and packing. It went from being chilly to downright freezing rain and snowing. Since we planned to visit and walk Navy Pier, we scrapped that and took the over-tired 4 year old back home.
The entire drive was sleet and rain. Plus there was a storm warning for the area.
We did beat the snowstorm, but barely. It's been snowing steadily since we arrived home.

For Chris's birthday last year I bought him tickets to Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Well, today is the day!
We also won the lottery for entry into the big panel for Saturday. I was a little disappointed their big panel was Galaxy's Edge, which is the theme park they're putting at the Disney parks. But it turns out this was great for Chris, as it turned into a whole marketing and promotion type event, and that's totally in his wheelhouse of knowledge and interest.

Plus part of the pre-show was done by Warwick Davis, so that was fun.
Quinn did great waiting 2 hours for the panel to start (especially after a 3 hour car ride). By the time the panel started he was bored and wanted to play on his tablet, so he watched a movie while we watched the event.
When the panel was done we headed to the show floor, which was in another building. The temperature in the sun was perfect at 50 degrees for walking between the buildings.

This entire helmet is built of mini stormtroopers.
They had LEGOs over by the lego booth for kids to play with, so we spent a fair amount of time here while Chris wandered some of the show floor.
Chris dressed up as one of the Fisher Price Space Adventure People, which was a toy line that came out at the same time as Star Wars.

Quinn, of course, was Han Solo (new costume).
It was a pretty busy convention. With a 4 year old in tow I didn't spend as much time taking photos or even looking at things as I normally would. He had a tendency to wander off, as kids do.
I was impressed by the number of books and the fact that the Del Rey book publisher had a booth. They were selling a con-exclusive cover for a Star Wars book. Admittedly I've only read one Star Wars book, nothing was a huge must have. But I appreciated that a publisher for several books I've read over the years had a booth, since I've never seen that at a comic convention.
We were at the convention basically from 8:30am to about 4:30pm. Quinn did great considering how much walking and waiting was involved in everything. We stopped at the show store on our way out and he fell in love with this crystal fox, whom he named sniffy. He's been carrying it everywhere since picking him up.
 The view from our hotel was pretty nice, so that was a happy bonus for the evening.