Easter Weekend

We had a really fun Easter weekend that wrapped up our spring break week. Our friend Sandra invited everybody in our ward to come to an Easter egg hunt at the park on Saturday morning since all of their family moved out of the area. Everybody brought 12 stuffed eggs per kid and the moms hid them while the dads watched the kids. Then the kids got to go and find 12 eggs each. It was a blast. This is the best egg hunt we have ever had. It was fun to see them swarm all over the park to find eggs that we had fun hiding. Thanks Sandra! We will be there next year too!

Christian is really wanting to eat his candy instead of taking this picture. Thanks Annette!

Katie has spotted an egg up in the branches of the tree.

Score!

As soon as they had their dozen eggs, Christian sat down and started to eat. Not wasting anytime!

This is a picture of our "table scape" that Katie provided for us for our Easter Dinner on Sunday. She set the table perfectly and added flowers and key limes by each fork. She was so cute and helpful. She has hope in the decorating area that does not come from me.

We ended our Easter Sunday with going to the Mesa Arizona Temple grounds that were thick with perfumed air from all of the beautiful blooming flowers. It was gorgeous and an awesome temperature. We always go into the Visitors Center for the Christus presentation (5 min.) as the kids really love it. It was a slow day and the kids got a chance to answer some questions about Christ. It is always nice to know that they are soaking in what you are trying to teach them. After that we were led to the "Reflections of Christ" display. It is a really amazing and wonderful pictorial, set to music, of Christs life. It was an awesome, spiritual way of ending Easter. If you are in the area and haven't seen it, it is here for another two weeks at least, you should go! At least click the link above, but there is more and it is really quite amazing in person. Hope your Easter was good! Happy Late Easter!

Fishing and Playing

The Riparian Preserve is becoming one of my favorite places to go. Which is convenient considering that it is right next to the library another favorite place to go. The flowers have started to bloom and it was fun trying to take some different pictures with my camera. We started off "fishing". We set up our chairs and watched the kids as they took turns casting the fishing line, as kids can fish without a license. Now we claim no great knowledge in the fishing area, but the kids had fun. We didn't have the right kind of bait, so some little attitudes almost bloomed in frustration, until we pointed out it was a great time to practice their casting skills. They were doing pretty well by the time they decided they wanted to explore the other side of the bridge.

The last time we went to the preserve we finally found the kid play area, which is really cool and very nontraditional. Serpentine concrete walls undulate and snake through the area giving a wide enough footing to walk along the top (Yes, I am trying to re-expand the mother vocabulary). Ants or spiders are stamped along the top. Another wall at the top of the hill that has many other shapes in the side and top. It is a great area for them to stretch their imaginations and get used to some play from a safely unprotected height. It was a fun mid-day activity. They are now back to playing in the backyard with the box...

Boxes

Ah, the love of boxes. I remember reading a book when I was young, about a girl who gets this huge box to play with from her parents. It goes through several transformations, of different things for her to imagine with. Two weeks ago we got an elliptical machine in a HUGE box (with some final assembly for us to do). Our kids have been chomping at the bit to get a hold of the box. We finally got the machine out of the box and into the backyard for the kids to play in. It has been the best toy for this spring break. I couldn't have planned it better. Today, I finally took pictures with the kids and friends that were over (Emily and Kristin). They had a blast. Ironically, my normally space ranger/pirate Christian was the nurturing one of the group today in the pictures (notice he is protecting his bunny bear and the girls are toting the water guns and cardboard sword).


Later, I went looking for Katie as I had promised to take her on an errand with me after I finished cleaning up some of my baking messes. When I called for her, no one answered. Finally, Christian pipes up, "She's in the box, Mom!" And so she was. The first picture is how I found her and then what she was up too. Ah, the majesty of youth, the price of admission for one great imagination, is a box.

Bunny Ears

Katie and Christian found bunny ears in the dollar section of Target today. I told them if I bought them, that when they saw their dad, they would have to hop out to him like little bunnies. It took us awhile to find him (he was painting car parts on the side of the house) so I had a chance to grab my camera, but not fix the settings on my camera (little fingers like to explore it). So sorry the quality is not awesome, but I thought it was still too cute not to share.

Book Tag

The Rules...

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog
5. Tag 5 people

"He stared. "Nothing.""

The Wednesday Letters by, Jason F. Wright

Jeralee, yours was a lot better!

Game on!

Last week our friend Brian was here for a conference and then stayed for a few more days of fun. He enjoyed waking up to 60 degree weather while his family woke up to 3 degree weather. Gotta love the weather we are having right now in Arizona! The only problem is that he didn't bring his wife Jana with him to enjoy it. (We missed you Jana!)

We spent Friday and Saturday night playing games with Brian, who has become a serious gamer. Now, Mike and I have bought and received games as gifts, but we haven't spent a lot of time playing games. I grew up playing games with a large competitive family. However, about 10 years ago after witnessing "Rich Man, Poor Man" gone wrong, I felt like I turned off my "gaming" (i.e. competitiveness). That switch has apparently been turned back on. Mike is now referring to me as a gamer. On Saturday we went to a game store with Brian that he had wanted to check out. We walked out with our own new game "Blockus" that we have fallen in love with. Even Christian can play and really mess up the best laid plans. It is a great family game.

On Saturday he introduced us to "Ra" a really fun game that takes a little learning, but totally worth it. I think we may have been slightly entertaining to Brian with this one, but it was great.Our friends, the Gunters, who also moved from Idaho a few years ago, got to come all the way from Mesa to join us for games on Friday. We played a survivor type game of alliances and back-stabbing. It was a good time. :) (Right Lynn?)


We have been wanting to have a game night for a long time with friends and it was a great dry run to see how the kids would react with us putting them to bed while we were still playing games. It was fairly successful, so we are excited to get the gaming going. Just watch out, the switch has been flipped (although Jana hinted strongly to Brian that it was never off,...this really is news to me!) :)

Thanks for coming down Brian! We had a blast and even though Christian is glad to have his bed back, I think he misses you.

What color is that?

The other night as I was brushing my hair and getting ready for bed I notice a really shiny piece of hair. My first thought was that it was a little early in the season for my hair to be getting those kind of blond streaks. As I kept looking at it, it almost seemed to sparkle in the light. Suspicion started to creep in. It was just too sparkly, I had never had anything THAT sparkling. Pulling the hair from my head I asked Mike, "Isn't that blond." He just started to laugh. "No, that is definitely gray, honey." How rude. Not even a moment of contemplation. Still unbelieving I did the first test I could think of, I grabbed my hot pink shirt and lay the hair in question on top of it. Even in the face of evidence I was unbelieving,...for a moment. What is someone to do in the face of such news at such a YOUNG age? Take a picture, of course. Because, I pulled that sucker out and it is gone forever. Right?

Just...Ran...Out...of...Juice...

So, it seems that I am either on or off, no in between...and I have been dragging my feet adding anything, mostly because I have dragged myself into the ground by not getting enough sleep. Mike and I have had a pow wow on this issue and it should get better,...for a few days. :)

We have actually been pretty busy around here. We have been delivering Girl Scout cookies, volunteering at school, doing the usual shuffling around and last but not least I did a three week stint as a part time babysitter. How did this happen you may ask? Well, the kids wanted to have our neighbor girl over to play finally (after months of them living there). Both families were getting out of their respective cars after the school pick-up. They ran over to ask and we got the okay. Then the Dad asked if I could take his daughter to school a few days a week as he would be working during the day too now (that's right he would be doing a night shift then a day shift...let's just say, their lawyer tenant renting their house in Chicago is only paying enough to not get evicted). So then I asked who would watch their youngest, as the mom taught school during the day too. He looked up at me and asked if I would be interested in that part time position. Their situation touched me, even though we really didn't know each other well. One must be desperate to ask a neighbor they don't know well. As the girls have AMAZING manners and were so well behaved that day at my house I said yes. The longest the babysitting would have lasted was until school ended, but the dad's health couldn't handle being awake for 36 hours that often for some reason (yeah, right, I can't handle life without close to 8 hours every 24). Now he is looking for a job to fill in the other nights he wasn't working. Hopefully they sell their home back there soon! The cool thing is, is that we now know our neighbors really well (peeling that artichoke skin off... :), and they are really neat. Here is an okay picture of the two younger girls. I would also watch the older one after school until the first parent or 12 year old sister would get home.


Katie fell in love with Jolee as a friend right away. They are only a year apart.
Our kids love playing with theirs and we really feel that the Lord has surrounded us with some amazing and humble neighbors. Our neighborhood has had its interesting times, but I feel home now.

A few weeks ago, we went out the Riparian Preserve, next to our beloved Library, and had a fun time seeing what desert nature could look like if we didn't make the mesquites into trees and we didn't have so many houses around. Here is Katie with her dad, so sweet.

Here is Katie trying to get as close to the little bunny as possible. She loved it!

And of course, we have to have a picture of Christian in here too. He was being silly with Katie's dress up stuff awhile ago. He almost didn't let me take the picture, but I convinced him to let me. He thinks it was such a funny gag. He is a bit of a ham.