3.28.2016

Easter Eve Activities


Snake River Landing Easter Egg Hunt
I would normally avoid a community Easter Egg hunt like the plague, but since this was put on by a company next to Brian works, and I have loved every event by Bills Bike and Run, we decided to give it a shot! It worked out great to go with our friends, the Harkers, because we have kids of similar ages and all three were in a different area for the hunt. So we could split up and have some adult supervision and give pep talks. Haha! I got to hang out with Emmy and Tylie at the 5-6 yr old spot. They are of course pro's and just couldn't wait to get started. More friends from the neighborhood kept appearing, so it made everything more exciting to have some familiar faces there. Brian and I gave the girls a pep talk on the drive over too, pretty much telling them to not open the eggs as they picked them up and to grab as many as fast as they could (bc there were going to be some sweet prized)...and they all were insanely aggressive and made a haul! We ended up with a bunch of cheap candy and few coupons, and some very happy children :) I think Bree ended up getting the most eggs out of all of her sisters! 
I grabbed these shots off of some professional photographers website.
 I didn't get to see Sadie's hunt because the girls and I were freezing! I hadn't dressed anyone warm enough. It was cool to pick out Sadie in this shot and see how fast she was!

I went on a 6am run around the river with Shannon because Bills Bike and Run was giving away prizes in the eggs.  The rule was you could only take one egg and boy did we have a hard time finding eggs in the dark! Thank goodness I could use the flashlight feature on my phone otherwise our early morning adventure would have been in vain. The egg I found was way high up in a tree and I had to jump as high as I could to hit it out of a branch. Shannon won a cool tech shirt and I won an entrance into the Goldilock Race series, that I happened to already sign up for. They said the would reimburse me so that is about a $60 prize...SWEET! We may have to do the run at 5am next year because two other friends went that early and said there were so many people there.
 Papa and Grandma Easter Treats
 Grandma is so good about making holiday treat bags for all of the grandchildren (and Brian and I too)! They included their testimonies on the back of some beautiful pictures of Jesus with children on his lap! Such a perfect present for Easter!
 Decorating Eggs 
The only way I could get these girls to leave Utah after spring break was to promise them that we'd decorate eggs when we got home...so even though I was super burned out from the drive we boiled the eggs and got to work. Brian did most of the work actually and I brushed the dust off of my camera and took some pictures!  I've been lazy and have just been using my phone to take most of the pictures lately. They never turn out as good and using my big ol' camera!
Easter Morning
7am and these girls were up and excited to find their baskets! I had bribed them to wear curlers in their hair through then night and boy do they look cute with all of those curls! They have been trying to earn "Disney dollars" for our upcoming trip so they are willing to do just about anything to get them!
Rosie Belle on her first Easter!! I could just eat her up. She is so dang cute!!
Those dimples!!
These girls love fans, bubble bath soap, and candy of course!
Brian doesn't get to make it into nearly enough shots :)
Rosie got a ring pop in her basket because I think the Easter bunny was feeling like it was a little too empty. I am sure that he wasn't really planning on her eating it though! Lucky for Rosie that Bree opened it up and game it to her when Brian and I weren't looking! She was sucking it just like she does her binky and was in heaven! I loved seeing this blue tongued baby!
 Sunday Best
We never did a shot with the whole family. Rosie was asleep and these four left for church and then I woke her up and we raced to make it before the sacrament started. Here we all are before and after church taken with phones, cameras...whatever was closest, hence all the pictures looking so different.
Easter Egg Hunt
It was lightly raining outside so we had the hunt in the basement. It was a tad bit on the messy side making the search even more challenging!
The majority of the eggs had Disney pins inside that we are going to trade on our upcoming trip. We heard it is a fun way to interact with the workers and kill time when standing in line. Emmy talked to so many workers last time and had fun making a lot of friends so this will be right up hers and Bree's ally. We will see what Sadie thinks!
I got to teach the lesson in my 4/5 year old primary class on Easter and we had so many great talks throughout the month with the girls about the Resurrection. Teaching the importance of Easter to so many different children was such a great reminder to me of the importance of God's plan and that we were celebrating something so much more important that the Easter Bunny! I am so grateful to have the gospel in my life and to have a testimony that Jesus lives and we will get to live with him again someday! Brian and I decided that next year we are going to have all of the Easter Bunny festivities on Saturday so we can have a more Christ centered Sunday. Here's to new traditions!

3.13.2016

Spring cleaning

Brian has been going through his closet and look who has ended up with his reject t shirts. I guess they make cute pajamas.....still deciding on it. Bree's shirt is pretty much just perfect for her and her competitive side!

Emmy In All Her Glory!

Birthday pictures are always fun because I only have to worry about getting one child ready and then we can spend a lot of time goofy off during pictures! Emmy is the queen of pulling faces and always is so expressive! This shoot was by far the most relaxed Emmy has been in front of the camera...can you tell :) 
This little girl was telling me the other day that she hated playing, and I had had it up to HERE with her, so I booted her out the door to play with neighbor kids. When I came to check on everyone, I found Emmy in the garage sweeping up all of the dirt and dust that had collected all winter long. She asked if I could back my car out so she could sweep the other side of the garage! How did I get so lucky to have this girl!?! She really is either driving me nuts or the best helper anyone could ask for!
Parent Teacher Conference was last week and of course Emmy got raving reviews and is the top of her kindergarten class (I am laughing as I write this because it's kindergarten and all). Her teacher said she is a perfect angel during the day! Emmy must save all of her feelings for her Mama!
 

Soaking in the Sun

We finally got a warm day and a day off from school! Hurray! We met at the river with our zillion of kids and made it to the park in one piece! SUCCESS!
We have a neighborhood full of stir crazy children that have been couped up all winter long! I was so happily surprised to find a bunch of them in the backyard playing an organized game and all getting along....Parenting success right there! There is a lot of behind the scene training to get kids of all different ages to play good together! So I am just totally going to take credit for it! Haha! We have filled our backyard with so many playthings that it is like children are just sucked back there without a choice. Brian is working on a huge teeter totter airplane that fits about 8 kids on it. We are going to have more toys than grass soon!

3.12.2016

CLAP


Time Out For Women

I have never been to a Time Out for Women and I was so glad Eva planned it and got us all to go!  There were of course the best speakers and musical artists and a lot of talks on sisterhood and serving those around you. There seemed to be a theme of people having faith crises and making it through. 
Michael McClean spoke the first night and very intimately shared his 10 year faith crisis. We all cried through Alissa Parker's talk on losing her daughter and she had a great message on how we are all connected to eachother.

Lunchtime with the smallest brownies ever!!

3.06.2016

Emmy's 6th Minion Birthday Party

Emmy wanted a Minion themed birthday and since the movie had just came out, it was super easy to find everything we needed for it! Brian had the wonderful idea of Emmy having a movie Minion party and it sounded easy enough, so we rolled with it. I started to design a birthday invite and while I was gathering ideas I came across this cute one and decided it wasn't going to be worth the time and hassle to put one together myself when someone had already spent the time doing it. Etsy and Pinterest are the best!
This note was Emmy's contribution to getting ready for her party. She wrote, "Check in the pocket of the minion. You will like it. You have to!" (I think she left out the "you").  Inside the pocket was the invitation to her party. Pretty funny girl!! She writes stories and notes all the time. 
Sadie was a great server and helper during the party! It's so nice that her and Emmy are old enough to really be good helpers.
Emmy is Miss Social and always has a hard time narrowing down who she'd want to invite, so she always ends up with a big party.
The kids were laughing hysterically throughout the movie. I watched some clips and the minions started to grow on me (I've never been a huge fan)!
Rosie Belle loves big groups of people and seeing how much attention she can get. Pretty easy when you are this darn cute!
This picture truly captures youth at it's finest...nose pickin, face makin!
The crew
Emmy was super polite and read everyone's cards and appreciated their artwork. She is very aware of others feelings and always tries to make her friends feel important. The only person I've really seen her clash with is Bree, but that is a blog post for another day.
Our friend Maddie made sure to take good care of Rosie!