Easter

 

Easter festivities were good. It was pretty low key this year. This kids claim they had like 5 Easter egg hunts (which may be true), although I didn't have to do much for any of them. This is good if you are me and don't like to plan stuff like that. At least one of them was put on by them in the back yard. One of them was with the Daniels side of the family over a month ago when we said goodbye to Jared's brother Alan and his family. They moved to South Carolina. This is especially sad for Erin because Kimberly is her closest cousin on that side. There were probably a couple at school that I am not really aware of. The last one was the day before Easter at my Aunt and Uncle's ranch. It is a yearly tradition that my kids have come to look forward to. There are tons of kids and tons of eggs to find. And then there's the pinata. Good times.

My sister Emily was here the day before Easter so we decided to dye eggs. I think Connor and Marissa were playing with friends somewhere and Hallie was sleeping, so it was just Erin, Alex, Emily and me. The kit I bought had bags that you put dye in, and then you just roll the egg around until it's colored. Definitely not the usual egg dying tradition that takes place, but it was easy and only took like 5 minutes in all.

They each got a basket and church clothes. Everyone also got sandals in their baskets. I figured since their feet keep growing, it would be a good time to give them something they already needed.

Here are some shots of Easter Sunday.

That night we had a fun dinner at Emily's house. Yay for no cooking for me!

Alex had to make an Easter hat for school and decorate a hard boiled egg for an egg roll. I love that he used his St. Patrick's Day hat as part of his Easter one. He also recently learned how to make eggs and toasted cheese sandwiches. Yesterday he just made everyone eggs while Jared and I were asleep. I love independence.

 

Marissa lost her first tooth, the traditional way at least, at the ranch the day before Easter. Her first real tooth she lost was when she was two and it got knocked out. She lost her other bottom tooth a few days later. She will get her flipper out the next time we go to the dentist so she will have three spaces pretty soon. Exciting times for her!

Luckily, the weekend after coming off of their Easter candy sugar high, there were four birthday parties the next weekend that replenished their candy stock. I know at least two of them had pinatas. Ugh, candy. It kind of never ends, does it?

Erin performed their play, Neverland, last week. It was very entertaining. I was amazed by how expressive Erin was on stage. I've always known how dramatic she is, but I wondered how she would be in front of a lot of people. She was great. I think she may have a future in drama. Next year Erin, Alex and Marissa want to do the play. (It's only 3 times as expensive, no biggie) I'm sure they will love it.

Hallie has become a big climber lately. She climbs on our play set and all the way up Marissa's bed (Connor doesn't even do that). She also has been loving our neighbor's trampoline, as long as big kids aren't jumping too high.

Connor seriously says the funniest things.  Here are some:

-"Please bless that we won't fall in hot lava."

-"Please bless that we can get a trampoline and a play set, but we already have a play set, and I want a trampoline like Emma, because she is getting one for her birthday, and she is Erin's friend, and Aurora is mine and Marissa's friend. Jesus Christ, amen."

-Today he wanted to play the stop light game, meaning he calls out all the green lights and I call out the red lights. At a red light he yelled, "Mommy, SAY IT!" I told him not to be so mean about it and he said, "I'm not being mean about it, I'm just being the boss."

-Earlier, he was singing, "I am so strong, but Alex can totally still beat me and Hunter up."

-"There's only three of us left at the table, and that's how old I am. I want to get bigger so I don't have to be your servant anymore." What does a servant do? "Put dishes on the table and stuff" How old do you have to be to not be a servant. "16"

-One day I wouldn't let him have bread before bed and he yelled, "Ahhh! You are a naughty mommy!"

-Last week he came home crying and I thought he was hurt. I asked what happened and he said through his crying, "We were running home and Marissa was running faster than a Cheetah and she beat me."

-"Can you open this? Open these graham crackers. OPEN THEM!... pause... Can you open these PLEASE?... Whooo, I almost whined."

-I bought him some pull-ups to wear at night and he started calling them fruit roll ups. I was only confused for a bit the first night he yelled, "I have my fwuit woll up on!" Love that kid.

In other news, we bought a new truck... and by "new" I mean that it is still 10 years old, but 5 years newer than our other two cars. I've vowed for years that my next car would be a truck to haul all the wood and furniture home for projects. The more we looked, the more I realized that I wanted a full crew cab that would seat 6. It still wouldn't fit our whole family, but at least if one parent is alone with the kids they would all fit. Jared felt pretty strongly that he wanted 4 wheel drive. I was starting to feel a little stressed about trying to find the right truck at the right price and not really knowing where to go. We just felt a little overwhelmed and confused by everything. I told Jared that we should start praying about it, I think it was on Sunday. The next day, we were at our neighbor's house for FHE and we told him about what we wanted. He works at a car dealership and sometimes gets trade-ins. We had mentioned it to him before but he didn't have anything for us. A couple of days later he called and said that he had our truck for us. We went down to look at it on Friday and bought it that day. It's a white Chevy Silverado crew cab and it is literally exactly what we wanted. I feel like it was an answer to prayer. I get kind of stressed out when it comes to big purchases like cars, which explains why we haven't bought one for 7 1/2 years.

We sold our Mazda 626 two weeks later. We bought that car when it was 5 years old, right before we had Erin... 10 years ago! It's been a good, reliable little car for years. It was just getting old and starting to have issues. Jared replaced the fuel pump in January, or should I say December-January? The car was in pieces for like 5 weeks. That was a really hard one to fix because just getting the fuel tank out was a big pain. Jared is pretty amazing to even take on something like that, but I had no doubt he would be able to fix it. There was another repair that we had done a month later. I was so happy to sell it. We didn't get a whole lot for it, but it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore. The kids love the riding in the truck, because of the novelty and all. I am looking forward to buying some plywood for my next project and throwing it in the back, you know, because I'm weird like that.