Easter

 Easter has come and gone and I haven't had a chance to blog about it until now, even though we're a week late. A couple weeks before Easter I put up our 3 Easter decorations :): The Easter banner that hangs in our kitchen, The 'Easter, He Is Risen' plate, and the spiritual Easter eggs in a basket that we kept on our piano. And the spiritual Easter eggs aren't technically an Easter decoration...they are more part of our family scripture study for the 12 days leading up to Easter. If you want to make your own spiritual eggs or are just curious as to what goes inside of them you can click on the 'spiritual Easter eggs' link above.

 Saturday morning we went to our local grocery stores Easter egg hunt which is something we've done the past 4 years. It's at 8am which meant I was going to have to miss Zumba, so I decided to jog there instead of drive and Elisabeth and Charles rode their bikes along with me. See me and my fancy work out clothes below :). Nora was a little concerned being so close that the large and furry bunny.

 Can you find Annabelle on the aisle?

 Sunday morning the kids woke up and did our traditional scavenger hunt to find their Easter baskets. We've used these same pastel-colored, laminated, paper Easter eggs for years, and we write a clue on the backside of each one (I think there's ten?).

 Here's a couple of our hiding places this year: piano and on the side of a blog book.

 And the last egg led them to the bathtub which is where the baskets were hiding.

 We always put something religious in their baskets and this year Scott found rubber CTR (stand for Choose The Right) rings in all different colors at Deseret Book for 99 cents so each child got one in an egg. Jane and Annabelle's rings are too big so we hung them on string so they can wear it as a necklace until they grow into them.We also got the seminary Book of Mormon dvd which has tons of short videos on there explaining different principles of doctrine. Scott and I have watched a lot of it with the kids and we all really like it. Charles favorite segment is Boyd K. Packer's talk put to video about crocodiles and traps of enticement. Fascinating! By the way, Charles has recently asked me, twice, to only call him Charles. No more Char or Charlie...at least not for now :).

 We eat a lot of whole foods around here and not much sugar so the kids mostly got snacks that were still pretty healthy but which I don't usually buy like pistachios, 100% juice capri suns, organic natural animal crackers, green pea snap crisps, natural cheeto puffs(not sure how natural they really were though), fruit leather, they each got a couple of quarters and the older kids got bed time passes which they had previously (and repeatedly) requested. They each got 2 chocolate peanut butter eggs but only because that's Scott's favorite and he wanted some so I got a bag and split it amongst them all.

 Elisabeth and Charles already have big plans to use their bed time passes when they go off-track in a couple of weeks. We'll see if they can hold off that long.

 We had chicken pot pie for dinner.

And here is Jane with her new neon sandals that she bought with her birthday money from her grandparents, and below is a very short clip of Jane doing an impersonation from an Easter movie we recently saw (and wouldn't recommend).

And one more Jane clip for good measure. Do you know what book she's reading?


Happy Easter! Jesus lives and loves us all, and we love Him too!

Picture Dump

This post could probably be divided into 5 different shorter posts, but I'm doing it all in one because life just keeps moving and going and there is always so much more to blog about and I don't want to get super behind. So here are a bunch of seemingly random pictures and events that have been going on in our family for the past week or two:

1. Spring arrived and we had some nice weather for a few days...one day it was up in the low 70's! The kids were out with neighbors playing kickball...I took this picture from my driveway.

 And then the next day it looked like this. Snow, and lots of it! We got several inches. It was crazy but it melted pretty fast. It warmed up again since then and we've been able to have the windows wide open and we've gone out on several walks.

2.  We were able to visit a new fire station when they had an open house. I think the coolest thing I saw was the kitchen and their pantry. The kitchen was really nice. It had a huge island in the middle, beautiful counter tops, and nice pots and pans hanging from a rack in the ceiling. I was a tad bit envious of these fire fighters kitchen for about two seconds... until I saw their bedrooms and remembered they had to live here a couple nights a week, away from their families and sometimes stay up all night fighting fires. I'm grateful we have them, but at the same time I'm grateful Scott is not one of them :). We also thought the pole they slide down was pretty awesome so we took a picture by it with our fire fighter guide.

3. I'm not a big clothing shopper. In fact I rarely shop for clothes. I'm lucky enough to have a sister who loves to shop and frequently updates her wardrobe and passes her 'old' things onto me; and she's so dang cute that her 'old' stuff if still amazing. My kids get lots of hand-me-downs as well from cousins and friends so that's another reason for not shopping. But the other day we were at Walmart getting groceries and other things and there were these racks down the middle aisle with big signs above them marking everything for $3 and $1. I checked them out and we found a few items: $1 grey sweatpants for Nora, $3 grey sweatpants for Scott, $3 robe for the older girls, $3 red skinny pants for me! I love finding a good deal!

 4. We've been on this cleaning/organizing kick for probably, oh, a year or so :). Actually, this happens after each baby. You see, when I get pregnant I get really sick and the house gets messy and chaotic and there are toys and clothes everywhere and very small children sitting on the table and counter tops eating out of boxes because Mom is lying on the bathroom floor throwing....well, you get the picture. Once the nausea passes I am a lot heavier and even though I'm able to keep things in okay order, they're still not as nice as I'd like it to be because I'm slower, don't have as much energy and things are harder to reach with my big belly. Then the baby arrives and I'm healing and then all I want to do is hold the baby because I know she's not staying this small for long, and so I do, and cleaning and order get pushed off a little bit longer. But once baby is a month or two, I usually start to get things back in order and do a lot more organizing and cleaning. Over the next few months I'm working on getting back the stamina and energy I had previous to being pregnant and I do this by doing a lot, pushing myself a lot, seeing how far I can go, and how much I can do and how fast I can get it done. I like to play little games with myself like: how much can I clean during the time it takes for the bread to rise. Or, how many dishes can I load while the food is warming in the microwave for 30 seconds. Anyway, I de-cluttered my kitchen counter tops a few weeks ago (I also organized two large shelves in the kitchen that were desperately needing to be organized), moved the basket out that holds mail and papers and so far I've been able to keep up with it. Organization and cleanliness makes me so happy so this is something that I've got to do for myself in order to maintain a certain level of peace and contentment within our home.

 5. Elisabeth's hair is getting so long! She asked me to do a waterfall braid in it recently which is a hairstyle I hadn't done on her hair for quite some time and it was so different and so much easier to do this with her hair being so much longer now.

 6. Everyday after I get up, pray, make my bed and read scriptures I make a list of things I need to accomplish that day. Sometimes I'll even make the list the night before if there are certain things I need to remember to do that day and I don't want to forget. I took a picture of one day's list:

 I make lists for the children when they are off-track and I occasionally will put up a list for Charles even when they're in school because it helps him stay focused.

 The other day when I woke up and came out to the kitchen to write down my list on my white board I found this: Elisabeth had made a list for her day. She's definitely one of mine! It looks like I'll need to get another white board because she has been monopolizing mine ever since. Or maybe I could draw a line down the center and we can share :).

Nora at 11 months

 Look at this baby! She is getting so big! She is now standing up to and walking along furniture! No! Do you ever wish you could freeze time? Well, I wish I could now. I absolutely LOVE being the mom to all my kids at all their different ages and stages and soon I won't have a baby anymore and that will be really sad for me. I love seeing the wonder in her eyes on a regular basis because everything is so intriguing in her world.

 Whenever I'm in the kitchen cooking or cleaning, I always pull out this bottom drawer that's filled with kids plates, bowls and cups so she can disorganize it and throw things wherever she wants. She loves this and I love seeing her so happy in her little world.

 Nora has recently discovered the wonderfulness of peanut butter smoothies. I've gotta make a bigger batch now because she drinks a lot which doesn't leave much for my lunch!

 And here she is eating some cheerios while holding onto her cloth piece that makes her feel cozy and loved :).

 She's eating all sorts of fun foods now. Her favorite is still oatmeal with coconut milk, flaxseeds and pure maple syrup, but here she is enjoying some lasagna and garlic bread. I'll bring her in to the doctor in about a week when I take the girls in for their well-checks to see if she's gaining weight. With how much she's been eating I would imagine she's gained some, but ya never know. We've also just barely stopped nursing...not really my choice but with how many more solid foods we're giving her we haven't been nursing as much and I lost my milk supply. I was hoping to at least get her to a year, but this was pretty close so I guess it'll have to do.

Jane is 3!

 Tuesday was Jane's third birthday, though we celebrated it on Monday because Tuesday evening we had soccer practice, pack meeting for scouts and I had another meeting afterward. Scott and I put up our Birthday banner Sunday evening after the kids had gone to bed and got her gifts out for her to open Monday morning.

 Elisabeth got Jane some chalk for the chalk board that's in Jane's room, and a new pack of crayons that Jane can put in her scripture bag for church.

 Jane got several things in the mail from family which was very exciting. She would watch for the mailman and check it several times a day.

 Here she is wearing her new Birthday dress and singing in her new microphone. She sang with that microphone ALL day :).

 

 She made a special request for her birthday cake: pink or purple sparkly flowers. So I did a purple cake with pink sparkly flowers (This frosting was all left over from Annabelle's rockstar cake last month so I didn't have to make any new frosting! Score!)

 I'm jumping ahead of myself. Before cake we had dinner and she requested pizza so I made our spelt and whole wheat pizza and we had salad and Izze drinks.

 Since Jane is three and likes to do everything by herself, she insisted on putting the candles in the cake.

 And she did a pretty good job.

 Can you tell she's just loving this! Soaking up all the special birthday fun!

 But that one candle was a little far away so she had to get up to blow it out once the other two were out.

 Scott brought Jane the pretty balloon that's on her chair.

 And the night before was Jane's first night sleeping in panties and being dry and she's done it every night since, so here is Jane throwing away her night-time diapers. Happy Birthday to us! Way to go Jane!