Shake It!

Yesterday was so good for us! Yes, there was rain but only here and there and the weather was so warm. That means we play outside!! Our kids have been penned up with nasty weather for way too long (did you know we might break the record for rainfall this month?? 6.3 inches as of yesterday morning...) and everyone's getting pretty snippy, but yesterday I could say, "Go outside and play!"  Of course, the backyard is a swamp but the kids found things to do in the front like ride their bikes, practice their dribbling, and....

 working the hula hoop!

 She was so determined! It was adorable how she'd shake her entire body trying to keep that hula hoop up.

 I love this photo....the little tongue stuck out in concentration, the purple nail polish (thanks Margot!)

 She called to Nicholas to watch her success :)

She got better and better and, more importantly, she had a fantastic time trying! It was a great day to be out in the sun :)

A Little More Egg Fun

The weekend before Easter, our church had their annual pancake breakfast and Easter egg hunt. This was our first year attending so we were pretty excited! Until we woke up that morning to thunderstorms. Boo. So the party was inside, which is still fun for the kids but I really love it when our egg hunts are outside.

The pancake guy, Chris Cakes is the company, he was so fun! He flipped those pancakes up into the air and then he toss them up for you to catch on your plate! Luckily he asked each person about that ;) For the kids, he got really close and pretty much tossed it onto their plate. Smart guy :) Still, there were some misses and that was part of the fun. Of course, I didn't even think about pulling my camera out to capture that. I was too worried about catching my pancake ;)

After we had our fill of pancakes, we headed to face painting.

 Since they had to hide the eggs inside, they put a huge tarp down, covered it with colored grass and hid all the eggs in it. It was a pretty clever idea! Of course, they used plastic eggs. That could have been a real mess ;)

They took the kids in by age group and replenished the eggs between groups. Another clever idea!

 For Nick's group they had to line up facing the wall while someone said, "On your mark, get set, go!" I couldn't resist a picture :)

This is the only non-blurry picture I have of him scooping up eggs. He was like lightning!

It was fun to get together which our church family. 

Easter-2011

Our Easter celebration started with baking :)

Then church, which was amazing AND we we sang some of my very favorite songs! Bonus!

Then home for more traditions.

The Easter bunny has been very creative over the years. For a while, he hid little gifts and there were pictures/clues to guide the very little kids to the gift. Then, as the kids got older, there were rhymes in eggs to guide them. Lately, however, the Easter bunny has taken to fitting all the gifts into their baskets and setting up an elaborate treasure hunt!

The hunt begins upon entering the house:

 The clues had them all over the house! There were times when I heard breathlessness!

 The final clue was a word puzzle :)

 And they were rewarded for their efforts!

 There was lots of laughing and running. They had so. much. fun. We have a hard-working Easter bunny ;)

 My mom and dad joined us for church and all the after stuff :)

 A quick one of all of us:

 We had another guest this year too. Jon joined us! He and Kristen came right after church so they didn't miss any of our fun.

I think he's used to my camera ;)

 Isn't that a good picture?

We had a wonderful day with family! Even though some of our traditions are....frivolous...we are all very aware of the reason we celebrate this very important day. Resurrection Day.

"You are stronger, You are stronger, 

sin is broken, 

You have saved me. 

It is written, Christ is risen. 

Jesus, You are Lord of all!"

Coloring Eggs

We kicked off our Easter preparations with one of our favorite traditions...egg coloring! We had everything ready to go Friday afternoon but we wanted to wait until Kristen got home which basically means that I heard "When are we coloring eggs??" 542 times! When she finally got home, the party started!

 After all the eggs were colored and the last batch drying, there had to be some tickling :)

It was a fun way to start our Easter weekend! Hope everyone else had a great weekend!

Spring Formal--2011

Our homeschool co-op has gone through alot of changes in the past couple of years. Along with relocating to a different church, we've added high school classes and tween/teen nights as our kids have gotten older in an effort to satisfy the social needs of older kids. And you know what? They LOVE it! The classes that have been offered to our teens have been truly a blessing providing our big kids with the discussions and experiences that tend to happen in a group setting. It's been amazing to watch our co-op's transformation. There's now something for kids of all ages which is just as it should be for homeschool families since a good bit of us have kids of all ages ;)

One of the requests we had from the teens was a formal dance. Of course, this request was from girls! (it's all about the dress!!!) They formed a committee of teens and, along with a parent volunteer, organized the whole evening. They did a great job! There were decorations, food and even dance instructors to show them a few basic dance moves!

When I first asked Brandon if he'd like to go he asked, "Do I have to dance? Can I just hang out with my friends?" Um no, you have to dance. Everyone participates! It's like dance lessons. You don't go to dance lessons to hang out and watch! He declined. But the closer it got, the more friends signed up to go. I think he was the recipient of some peer pressure encouragement ;) Then when his friend Kyle said he was having an "after party" Brandon was ready to sign up!

So this is how it came to be that Brandon went to his first formal dance :) And you know what? He did dance. And he had a great time! Thank you, Margot and the teen committee for all your time and effort in making this a fun night for our teens!

We were running late (of course we were) so I completely forgot to snap pictures of him before the dance all dressed up so I swiped some from facebook :) Thank God for friends!

I love this one of Brandon and his good friend, Kyle:

Here's a few more taken by friends:

Such a  good group of kids!

Obviously the entire evening wasn't taken up by dance lessons, just the first half or so, which is when I snapped these:

 Ethan has that what-did-I-get-myself-into look. I think most of the boys were thinking that the minute the instructor lined up the girls opposite the boys!

 These next two are pretty blurry but I had to have them :)

 A couple of group shots. Don't they look great?? I was really impressed with the instructors too. I was really impressed with the instructor. He taught these kids quite a bit in a short amount of time. He was funny too which helped ;)

I didn't want to go sneaking around the dance floor embarrassing everyone. I'd have more and better pictures if I had ;) Instead I stayed by the doors snapping what I could. There was a professional photographer there (who happens to go to my church!) and I can't wait to see what she captured! Hopefully, I'll have more to post soon :)

Yesterday, our Reluctant Dancer asked me if this was going to be an annual event :)

Monday Morning

Today, it is finally warm! But the rain is coming, so.....I let the kids play outside this morning and we'll get our schoolwork done later :)

This was my reward for that decision:

She calls them "sunflowers". I love that she thinks of her momma while she's playing outside :)

Our kids love adventure! When we aren't having an adventure, they make one up ;) The minute the clouds started getting so dark and we new rain was very close this is what they did:

They dove under the pine tree for a shelter! They were cracking me up! I told them though they had to come inside the minute it started raining. I heard thunder and there's no way I'm leaving our babies outside under a tree in a thunderstorm! They had so much fun pretending though.

Now it's raining and we have school to do :) Happy Monday!

Forcing the Issue

A couple of weeks ago, we had some warm weather go through. We definitely took advantage and spent lots of time outside. But on the last day, I knew I wasn't ready to go back to the cold. I was dreading the huge drop in temperatures in just one day. I'm ready for SPRING! So I did the next best thing (besides a trip to a warmer climate ;))

I cut branches from our crabapple tree and stuck them in a huge vase on our dinning room table so I could have this! I picked up this idea years ago and have used it for many springs since. It makes these early weeks of spring a bit more springy for me ;)

Golden

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of attending a very special party. It was a 50th wedding anniversary party! You don't hear about those everyday! It was for Todd's Aunt Carol and Uncle Wayne and to make it even more special, it was a surprise! Many people came to honor them for their golden anniversary; some traveling from out of state. They are very loved :)

Their actual anniversary was April 1st. Carol was joking with me that their whole marriage was just a big April Fool's joke ;) She's absolutely hilarious!

Their daughter had ordered a beautiful cake and had pictures blown up into posters of "then" and "now":

 So sweet! Of course, I took some pictures of our time there ;)

It was so nice to see family and to share in such a special anniversary.