Easter Egg-Stravaganza!

Saturday was Easter Egg-Stravaganza here in South Bend and believe me, it did not disappoint! We started the day with a Bunny Breakfast complete with a "make your own" pancake bar, Easter crafts, live bunnies to pet, and a Easter egg hunt! Does it get any better? Sarah loved loading her pancakes with marshmallows & sprinkles, but she seemed to enjoy the plastic eggs filled with candy from the Easter egg hunt a little better. :-) Can you blame her?

Here are a few pictures of our morning!


Making a bunny hat with Daddy.


Sarah the Bunny!


Easter egg hunt


Sarah with FedEx the bunny!

After breakfast, we headed downtown where they had a bunch of different activities set up. We spent the rest of the day visiting the Easter bunny, getting Sarah's face painted, playing with sidewalk chalk, and scoring touchdowns on the field in front of the College Football Hall of Fame!

Here are a couple more pictures of our day.




Getting her face painted. Pretty sure this is the longest she's sat still in 3 years!


Pretty girl!


Sitting with the Easter Bunny!

As a reminder, here is last year's picture with the same bunny! What a difference a year makes!

Last year's photo! :-)

Sarah's picture even make it into the local paper! Below is a link to their online publication.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=SB&Dato=20100327&Kategori=News&Lopenr=327009999&Ref=PH

Baby Update

We just passed the 21-week mark, so I thought I would give a quick update on how the newest Noto is doing. We had an ultrasound last Friday and everything looks good. The baby was very cooperative and allowed us to get some good pictures to share! We've opted to once again be surprised with regards to gender so for now all guesses, bets, and old-wives tales are welcome!

He/She is moving around lik crazy now and is currently weighing in around 1 lb. This news was a little disconcerting to me given my weight gain, but what can you do? I'm just hoping our gains are not proportional as we go along. :-) Overall, we were very pleased with everything they told us and feel extremely blessed to have received such good news.

It might be a little hard to make-out, but here is one of the pictures they gave us on Friday. This is a profile picture of the little one's head & chest. Enjoy!

Sarah's Big News

I think most people already know what Sarah's big news is, but I wanted to share a picture of Sarah in her new t-shirt. We actually told most of our family we were expecting by having Sarah wear this shirt and it was always fun to see people's reaction when the news sunk in. :-) Our new arrival is due in early August and we couldn't be more excited. While I'm convinced Sarah doesn't have a clue what's about to happen, we're excited for this next phase of our lives and look forward to every sleepless minute! :-)

Sarah's First Visit to the Dentist

Now that Sarah has turned 3, she gets to start doing "big girl" things like going to the dentist. For many of us this is an experience we could do without, but it was cute to see how excited she was to go. Our first visit was more of a "meet & greet" so Sarah could get comfortable with the process, but she did great and keeps asking when she gets to go back! Of course, I think her desire to return has more to do with her new Ariel toothbrush and multitude of stickers, but hey, whatever it takes!

Sarah's 3 Year Pics

What's a birthday without a photo shoot, right? Below is one of my personal favorites, but be sure to check out the slideshow on the right hand side for a few more. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

It's hard to believe, but our little girl turned 3 last weekend! I can still remember the day she was born and here we are celebrating her 3rd birthday. Where does the time go?

Sarah LOVES Dora the Explorer right now so of course this became the theme for everything. In an effort to keep things as calm as possible, we decided to split the weekend with a friends party on Saturday and a family get together on Sunday. I think everyone involved will agree this was definitely a good idea! :-)

Saturday's party was a lot of fun and included a homemade Dora cake by Mommy as well as an adventure for the kids that Dora herself would be proud of! A special thank you to Steve, or Daddy, for putting together such a wonderful adventure for the kids. Everyone got to make their own backpacks when they arrived which we then filled with all of the items they might need on their travels. They then went to the top of "Mystic Mountain," down into "Crawl Through Cave," and finally ended at "Birthday Beach" where they found the treasure box full of birthday treats. :-) The kids really seemed to have a good time and we were happy that everything went so smoothly.

On Sunday, we went to Grams & Grandpa's house for the festivities and it was like Christmas came a second time! :-) Sarah is certainly a lucky little girl! She had a wonderful time playing with her new dress-up dresses, her trampoline, and beating Grandpa at one of her new games.

Thank you to everyone involved in helping make this such a special weekend for Sarah and for us! Everything came together, but we certainly couldn't have done it without all of your help!

Here area few pictures from both Saturday & Sunday. Please check out the slideshows on the right hand side for more pictures from both days.