He has Risen!

I'm so thankful for Jesus and all He's done for us. I know that His presence in our lives gives us the hope to get through challenging times and the perspective that eternity with Him is our long-term situation, regardless of what things we face in the short-term. And thankfully, our short-term lives aren't so bad :)

We started our morning with . . . okay, let me back up. Everyone was awake and I was still sleeping, when I came out to discover everyone under the age of 30 reading books in the living room and one playing games on his phone :) My arrival signaled the basket hunt festivities could now officially begin. With camera in hand, I followed the kids through the house on their quest.

Cards from Grandma J came in handy as name tags, this helped identify which basket belonged to which kid . . . they are good about keeping the secret if they find a less-well-hidden basket for those of our children who don't like the challenge as much as the find :)

The Easter bunny was on a budget this year, so the boys shared a special prize. Each had a clue in his basket. They had to read the clues together to figure out the location of the prize, which was a baseball bat for their latest sport venture, which was hidden in the couch cushions downstairs.

G was dressed for church before breakfast :) He just inherited his brother's blue (really blue) jeans and came up with this outfit on his own--tie and all.

 She shopped with me this year, because the necklace we gave her for her birthday broke--twice! Then the more expensive one we chose together was missing a (tiny) diamond before we even left the store! We paid the extra $12 for a second protection plan on this chain and pendant, you know, the fourth ones. Anyway, I needed her to try on a couple of spring things for the girls' baskets, and she ended up picking out the original Annie movie (which none of the kids has seen) for $4 at Target. Deal! Not much of a surprise for her this year, but she played along :)

At church, the kids could have gone to classes, but we decided to make it a family day. Little G sat by me and thoughtfully recreated the hand gestures our pastor made while talking. It kept me giggling, how seriously he followed along with the sermon (or at least the actions that went with it :)

Little Buddy tests the limits of his string

After church, we came home to a sunny day with just enough wind to fly the brand new kites that went along with the Easter basket finds. And for the first time, nobody needed help getting the kites aloft!

Dad gets artsy with some sweet kite flying pics of B!

I found myself taking a post-church nap, and then another nap in the afternoon! Sheesh! I groggily walked out of my room (I'd laid down while Buck was working on a project in there, and must have fallen asleep . . . 2 hours later . . .) around 4 and was just in time to help make Easter dinner. Buck found some delicious recipes for his new grill--smoked fancy eggs and smoked bacon-topped Brussels sprouts. Both turned out sooooo tastily! Ham, mashed potatoes, pistachio salad, King's Hawaiian rolls, it was a very nice meal!

Afterwards, we watched Annie--not realizing it is a 2.5 hour movie!! The kids headed off to bed and I corrected schoolwork until my third bedtime of the day arrived, lol!

We hope you had a blessed Easter, too!

Twas the Morn Before Easter

And all the through the town, egg hunts were happening as the rain poured down . . . Yes, it was a wet morning for Easter searches, but our first destination occurred indoors. And at shortly after 9 a.m. Now to most people, that's fairly late . . . to us, oh my carrots!!! That's early! Our karate school planted 330 eggs, mostly in plain sight, then lined up various age groups. G$'s age group boasted a lot of kids . . . they got to find 11 eggs each and one special, talked-up, GOLDEN egg! Well, the kids found the eggs, then eagerly cracked open the mysterious eggs of gold and found . . . nothing! :) Our karate school owner grabbed the wrong box of eggs and set out the empties from an earlier hunt, lol! He found the correct box, and swapped empties for quarter-filled wonders actually intended as prizes for the crowd of kids :)


An even funnier moment arrived, when B's group lined up (Gab could have participated, but chose to sit the hunt out). There were far fewer kids in B's group and they each got to find . . . 27 eggs!!! You should have seen G$'s jaw drop! :) In the end, all the kids still there waiting for siblings were invited to take another look through the gym and see if there were any stray eggs. They found plenty, so everyone was happy--not that they really would have cared either way. It's just fun to find the eggs, it doesn't matter too much how many they get. 

From there, we took a splashy little walk through the Target parking lot to get my nephew a birthday gift. I didn't realize we were partying until I got a text from my mom noting "donuts to celebrate in tow." This delayed our arrival at Easter festivities the second. In fact, my mom got there first with my brothers, my nephews, and my niece. Boy was that a fun at-our-church reunion :)

The girls immediately wanted to show the boys where they meet for church and youth group. It turned out, that worked perfectly because the egg hunt (remember those thousand plus eggs we stuffed earlier in the week?) couldn't be held outside, and instead occurred at 20 minute intervals in the youth room! My brothers and oldest nephew got to volunteer their egg hiding skills along with our girls. They set up three separate egg hunts! The first, our boys got to scour the room looking for treats. The second, my niece, in her alleged "first-ever" public egg hunt got her chance to collect plastic prizes and hand-stuffed treats. 

See that really high ledge under the sound booth above the garage door? That's where my very tall brother decided to hide eggs for the little children to find :) I saw more than one super happy baby getting hoisted above dad's head to pluck eggs from the ledge!

At first, G$ saw she'd missed the hunt he and his bro just swept, and planned to give up some of his treats to balance out her bag. But, Maga was willing to stick around for the second hunt, and G$ gave his cousin an assist on finding the good eggs :)

Our four boys found a Foosball table to keep themselves busy while the littler ones checked out their egg hunt prizes.

The rest of the morning, they played games, did crafts, and the bigger kids helped clean-up some and then we played four-square-in-the-air (I even got invited to the fun, lol, which seemed to have sketchy at best rules for game play).

After some Find-the-Pizza hunting, my mom and her carload arrived with lunch and the promised donuts. After a loud and laughter-filled meal, we sang the Happy song to Mr. A. He was about to nosh that donut without candle-clearance and mean, old Auntie J made him wait for proper birthday procedures to ensue :) 

So, what do you do with more teenagers than toddlers filling the rooms to the rafters? Board games! The kids settled into groups . . . a little Jenga for Maga and Miss G, which later turned into Hullabaloo for the two Little Gs, Jamaica for three boys, and LIFE for the rest.

When Hullabaloo concluded, the two littlests decided they wanted to put on a show for us. Minutes later, Mr. and Miss Fancy emerged (from separate dressing rooms) to show us their style. My camera was so slow, the tiara dropped in front of Miss G's eyes, right as the shutter finally decided to click--hilarious!

When everyone left and we finished dinner, some chores, and some homework . . . I fell asleep! Sound asleep on the couch at 7 p.m. A text from my husband awoke me from my nap 45 minutes later. Now this would normally seem like a "hey, just go to bed," time for most people perhaps, but around here, that's kind of like mid-afternoon :) 

Remember, I'd been up since before 9!! Lol :) 

BTW, I'm not reading back over this because, once again today, I fell asleep for a nap (this time before noon). There's no edits today, so hopefully I did okay on the first run. Oh my, and there's still Easter to blog . . .

Nearly Four Decades of Glam

Our girls were so excited when a special box arrived from Grandma J! They oohed and ahhed and eagerly tried on the gowns that Grandma wore just a *few* years ago :) Then they dashed down the hall as quickly as their slim-line, floor-length dresses would let them (that part was pretty funny!) to try on another. I don't think G has taken Grandma's class ring off since it, too, arrived in the mail. Such fun to share!

Easter Service

One of the great things about homeschooling, is that when volunteers are needed on a Wednesday morning--we're available to help! The kids were quite eager to get involved in this little church event :) 

This weekend while the boys are egg hunting, the girls will be egg placing, but they all know what's inside those plastic shells, because they stuffed eggs with candy and trinkets for 1.5 HOURS! That's a lot of eggs, folks! :)

It turned out to be even more fun because our neighbors (who started homeschooling this year) and their friends (we kind of know this family from church etc.) who also homeschool were there, along with several of the kids' Sunday school teachers, and of course a contingent of the older ladies--aren't they a hoot?!

When I broke out the camera phone at the end of the eggs, B said, "I was wondering when you were going to take pictures,"  . . . lol, he knows me so well ;)

Final Swim Lesson of the Season

The kids' abilities in the water have improved dramatically since they began lessons in the fall! This is the only video that was quick enough to be small enough to upload :) We decided that with baseball, street hockey, black belt testing, karate tournaments, guitar (C planning to start piano too), possibly tennis for the girls?? there's just too much to keep up with to swim too :) BUT, when it gets cold again, we'll probably re-enroll them, because I like that they are learning basic life-saving/life-guarding skills on top of the endurance and swim basics. The girls moved up four levels, B moved up 1, and G$ is almost ready to move up a level--just a little more endurance for the long swims.

Playing High School Dress Up

It's funny how on Sundays, I shut down. I plan to spend the whole day chillin' with the kids, and instead I let them watch a DVD while I take a two hour nap :) So, sitting at the dinner table (I did wake up in time to make that), B said, "Mom did you go on a lot of dates in high school? How many boys asked you out?" G pipes up with, "Probably 50?" Gabby adds, "Because you were really pretty back then, right?" Ouch! Lol! ;) "That's not what I meant!!!" ha!!


I told them I don't remember going on many "dates," but I went to a lot of school dances. That led to the girls asking about my dresses, which led to the revelation that they still existed and were in fact in our very house, which led to a half-begged request and several offers to help me dig them out :)

Due to the recent restructuring to access these beauties (LOL!) for a fb funny, the dresses weren't too hard to reach. Also in the bucket was my H.S. jewelry box that contains my class ring and my dad's which of course they wanted to try on, along with the remaining promish jewelry I hadn't already distributed to them for play jewels.

The girls also, of course, are just about big enough/old enough to fit into my prom/homecoming gear. When I gave the green light for trying on the *gowns* they could hardly wait!

First up--the dress I wore in my sister's wedding :)

B saw the draping on the back and was amazed that this dress came with a "hood" ;)

This was how they looked when their sisters first started the fashion show . . .

Then the goofiness of little brothers ensued . . . here's G doing the hula in his *prom dress* Give me strength! ;)

I think the trip down memory lane turned out pretty fun :) The boys have some growing to do to fit in their dad's letter jacket, their grandpa's class ring, and their great-grandpa's overalls, but they sure had fun pretending! My girls thought maybe undershirts would be more appropriate under the strappy dresses, and here I always thought I was modest--sewing in extra cover-up panels for low necklines, etc. :) You won't hear me complain about modesty though!! 

Busy, Sporty Day!

After squeezing in a couple of regular school hours, we headed to our karate school for a tournament prep class. An hour later, we scurried home, grabbed the baseball gear, and headed back out for two hours of baseball practice! This was the boys' first go at it since we moved (and then G$ was too little, so this is his first for real baseball experience). 


One of our coaches has connections to a gym, so we are practicing indoors--awesomesauce because it snowed most of the day. The other coaches we know a bit from karate (one family anyway :) and it was fun to see the boys doing something without their sisters that they can enjoy. They both liked hitting best, but G also enjoyed fielding. All the boys learned the basics of pitch form, throwing, catching, the usual. I loved the *toss, THUD* of this skill level. I bet we see some big improvements by the end of the season!

Directly after that, we scooted back to karate . . . our sixth visit this week . . . but for a great reason! One of their instructors, who also works with the ministry we've gotten to know well here, recently learned she has breast cancer. The kids got to watch as their senior master had his head slowly shaved to each highest bidder (bids were well over $100 each time!) We watched from the sidelines with the benefit pizza we purchased :) The girls also ordered t-shirts to support their teacher. All-in-all a fun, busy, snowy, sunny, crazy day!