Happy Easter!!

 Happy Easter from us!  We had a great and very busy day on Easter!

We started out waking up at 6am to get up, shower and have Easter baskets.  

We attended the 7:30am Easter service at church together as a family and then working the 9am service. 

 Dan brought along our Resurrection Eggs and he worked through all 12 eggs with our class - having a kid come up and open the next one, having them take a stab at explaining what was inside and reading the corresponding verse that goes along with it - then Dan talked a little bit about each one!  It was great and he did a great job - and it's a really good way to walk through the highlights of the Passover/Good Friday/Easter stories!

 The Thursday before Easter we had Sarah, Max, Grammy and Grandad over to decorate Easter Eggs!  Our kids had never decorated them overseas - I don't think.  The eggs in Thailand were brown (so no decorating them) and in Kuwait they were white, but still had chicken poop and feathers on them, so I didn't really want to hard boil them!

 They turned out so pretty!

 Our sweet kiddos ready for church!

 Our Family after church on the hillside

Me and my Easter Tweeter

We ran home to finish making things for Easter lunch and then went to Tasha and Todd's home to celebrate!  They are so kind to host this group for the last couple of years and this year we were able to join them!  We had lots of delicious food, lots of great conversation and lots of extended families!

I made homemade hummus and veggies and then lemon bars and chocolate chip shortbread cookies for dessert!

Our Family

 Megan and Mary Kate

 Dan had to head out from there to a week of training!  In his awesome truck!

 The kids and I stayed to enjoy the traditional Easter Egg hunt :)  Sharon and Dick were so kind to fill all the eggs for all the kiddos!  They had the little boys go first (the 3 and under crowd) and then the big kids got to hunt (the 5-13 year olds)!  Todd hid them WELL!  They were HARD to find!

The big kids got to find 4 and then come back and when everyone had found 4, then they could all go find 4 more and then more if they could find them!  There was one "golden egg" and it was found by Porter for the 2nd year in a row!

 Me and Megan

 Me and Jack

 Me and Kylie

Getting instructions from Dick on where the golden egg could be!

 Then I came inside and found these two sound asleep on the sofa :)  Just for a couple of minutes, but I'm sure it was much needed!

 These 4 cute boys play well together - and play hard together!  Jack LOVED being over at Stone and Porter's - playing hockey in the basement, playing outside on the playground, shooting hoops - so fun!

And these cute girls posted this later that day - yay for cousins!!!

Spring Break

 We started off Spring Break by going to Great Country Farms!

It was just the kids and I because Dan had to work all week, but we had a great time going there!  

 Megan wanted a picture of her milking the cow :)

 Scary, scary picture of our 3 little piggies!

 Looking at (and smelling) little baby chicks!

 The four of us getting ready to explore!

 Kiddos on an old tractor

 And riding a buckin' bronco together!

 Posing behind a cow - which Megan was grossed out by, because it shows the cows 4 stomachs in detail on the back side :)

 Loving the jumping pillow - like a huge trampoline!

 Swinging in unison on the foot swings!

 Sliding down the cool slides!

 Riding pedal go carts!

 Jack's highlight for the day!

 Scootering around

 Kylie and Jack in the stocks and Megan looking on smugly :)

 Being animals :)

Looking at the peacock

And sharing a bottle of Black Cherry soda after a fun morning!

Megan (our big front seat rider now at 12 years old) and Kylie passed out hard on the ride back home!

 Snuggled up!  We played a lot of Little Alchemy over the break and all started new games on it!

 And they got to sleep together 2 nights in a row!

We spent almost every night at church during spring break because of this:

We worked in the kid's program as a family Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  We attended Conversations with Grammy and Grandad, Mark and Heather and their family on Thursday.  Megan got to also attend on Wednesday with her small group!  It was amazing!  My friend wrote this up on her facebook page to let people know about it:  

Consider yourself invited! Our church is putting on a show this week...every night (mon-fri) at 7:30pm. It's not your "traditional" Easter show. It IS going to be hilarious, will have great music (think Beatles and Rolling Stones), yummy snacks before and after, is free and will leave you inspired and touched by the stories shared. You won't be asked to give ANY money or sign anything or raise your hand. Just come, enjoy and be blessed! Child care for age 0-10 kiddos is free and available! We are planning to go either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday if anyone wants to join us! I promise you'll be glad you did! 

It made for late nights the whole week (home around 10pm every night), but it was a great way to serve and spend our week!

Fun stuff!

Dan has been growing his goatee out for a while now - maybe 6 months?  It finally got so long and scraggly that we needed to give it a little trim - but he loves measuring it by Kylie's hand length, so he had me take a picture of it before we trimmed it!

At school, they have a Daddy's and Doughnut's morning - where Dad's get to come in with their kids and have doughnuts for breakfast!  The kids were super excited to have Dan drive them up and go with them!  Dan said it was packed out and that he knew a ton of dad's there!

I had the opportunity to go in and be a Mystery Reader at Kylie's school again (I had done it in October before)!  I asked Grammy if she wanted to go instead - and she did!  We brought the class to the front hall (Kylie's teacher and principal were so kind in arranging it all!) and Kylie LOVED having Grammy there to read to them!  Grammy gave 5 clues about herself to the teacher and the teacher read them throughout the day so kids could guess who would be there - they were:

1.  My favorite colors and blue and yellow.

2.  I love planting flowers in my garden.

3.  I love going to the beach with my family.

4.  I love tomato juice! (This is the one where Kylie KNEW it was Grammy!)

5.  I'm a grandmother!

She read Emil the Octopus and lots of poems out of Poems to Read to the Very Young! 

Random Happenings

 Kylie and Jack used my phone to take pics of themselves with their names they wrote in dominoes :)

 Jack's name

 We attended our church's Children's Volunteer Appreciation dinner.  I assumed it would be some random dinner.  I should have known better!  It had a baseball theme, dinner from Potbelly's and loads of entertainment!  Cracker Jacks, Take me out to the Ballgame, Babe Ruth baseball clips, a "Good News" Bear mascot, slingshot tshirts (where one also got stuck in the rafters) and a relay race!  Megan and Jack got to attend, too, since they volunteer in the toddler rooms every Sunday!

Relay race!

 Fun table decorations - AND Jack won 2 tickets to a Nats Game in May because he was the youngest volunteer!  He's excited to attend with Dan!!!

 Megan's been having LOTS of practice for the upcoming musical!  Here she is onstage in the middle left practicing "Momma I'm a Big Girl Now"!

We've been LOVING the warmer weather and the chance to get out and play with our neighborhood!  And getting to see this little one outside a bit, too!

Kylie had her friend over for a playdate and they had a great time having snack and playing outside!

 Then the next week we had another friend of Kylie's over and played kickball outside with the kids!  Mr. Corey even joined in and was the only one who was able to get Jack out!

 Jack's team won by a landslide - but the other team kind of had fun :)

 Spring sports have started!  They've had a lot of rained out practices, which has kind of been nice - but the first games were chilly outside!

 Kylie had her first 2 games on the same day and hasn't had a game the last 2 weekends!

 Headed to practice!

 Posing with Pappy!

And watching Jack's game!  His second game he scored and it was an awesome shot - he was one on one with the goalie and instead of booming it into the corner, he kind of tapped it with the outside of his right foot and sent it into the far right corner and totally faked the goalie out - it was awesome and such an amazing display of skill and restraint!

 Megan has started another season of volleyball in a different program and different format!  She has practice and then plays her game right after the practice!  It's been really fun to watch her!

And at church on Palm Sunday, we had a Christian Passover Sedar meal!  It was amazing to walk through it and see what happens and why!  They set the table all up and then had 4 kids partake of it - all the while, reading through the scripture and readings that go with it.  

 It was very cool!