Let the Hunting Begin!

After everyone had some rest time (aahhhh....just love the sound of that!), we headed outside for the egg hunts to begin! We decided to let the big boys hide the plastic candy-filled eggs in the front yard for Callie and Caleb. I told them not to make it too hard for them :)

Callie and Caleb waited patiently in the backyard...

Ready to hunt? (Caleb looks ready doesn't he? He didn't really have a clue what was going on yet...)

Callie knew just what to do and took off! :)

The big boys did great - they did some easy ones (see the ones in the middle of the yard?) and then others that were hidden in bushes, etc - so the kids actually had to hunt!)

Caleb finally caught on and very much enjoyed himself!

Jacob was like the director of the whole thing...shouting things like "I see another one still!" or "Callie come over here" or "Caleb - look in that bush!"

Gotta love that face of hers!

Not sure what he was pointing to - the egg was right there at his feet :)

Good job hiders! :) (Our neighbor Noah helped too)

Hey! Did you know there's candy in these??? And thus begun his love affair with jellybeans!! LOVES them! I had an extra bag of jellybeans left over and I totally think I'm saving them for potty training because he LOVES them!

Happy hunters!

He is Risen!

Caleb apparently wasn't all that impressed on his first exposure to Peeps! :)

Be impressed! All six of us - dressed and ready to walk out the door (and get a quick picture) at 6:45 AM on Easter morning!!!

It was a GREAT morning at Northside. We added a service and so I sang in all 3 services with David. We were so excited to see lots of new faces and pray that God continues to stir their hearts to come back again!

A Productive Saturday!

A great day today! I've been so thankful to have this week with my family! It's been a great time together and I have LOVED having David home! :) We got a lot accomplished today!

* Headed out to Old Navy pretty early this morning to snag the $6 polos deal that was running today. Was able to get almost all of us a couple of new polos shirts at a great price (they didn't have any small enough for Callie...got her a tank top instead :) ).

* Josiah filled up HIS marble jar today - yippee!! He chose to chip in his money that he had saved for a new DS game that was way on sale - hooray!

* Headed over to Banana Republic for David to spend a gift card that my sister gave him for his birthday. That stuff burns a hole in his pocket - he likes to shop immediately!! (I have been known to save that stuff FOREVER until I decide!) I walked this kids down to see the "Easter Bunny" while he was trying clothes on. Callie immediately wanted to sit in his lap (she loves anything in costume). The boys thought it was ridiculous because the bunny had a pink vest and pink bow on! Isn't the Easter Bunny supposed to be a boy? Anyways, we didn't buy the picture but let Callie sit in his lap so the 3 of them could get the free gift :) (notepad and pencil).

* Dropped boys off at a birthday party and the rest of us had lunch at Chick-fil-A. YUM!!

* David did yard work (looks FAB!) while I finished swapping out EVERYONE's clothes for the season! What a HUGE relief that is! It's always such a huge job - I don't enjoy it - but now it's done!! I found these two like this in Caleb's room while I was working on the big boys' clothes:
* Then while we were brushing teeth and flossing after dinner and baths tonight, we noticed Jacob's tooth had gotten looser. He decided it was time and ran to get Daddy to pull it out! :)

First tooth gone! :) A fun, productive day! Now gearing up for a BIG day tomorrow celebrating the fact that HE IS ALIVE!! (And I'm going to try to make a conscious effort to stay focused on THAT part of it - not the crazy long work day that all of us have to endure on a day like this with extra services and responsibilities involved! Just being real!) We're praying for LOTS of visitors and a GREAT day of worship and celebration!

Some Easter Traditions

We got to spend the day doing a few of our Easter-y traditions:

This was a new one for us - one I've wanted to do for years but this was our inaugural year of the Easter Egg tree! :) We love it!

Hanging them was made a little more....exciting....because of the rain this morning. I was anxious to get them hung since we've only got a few days left before Easter so as soon as the rain stopped, I was out there. I forgot to consider the fact that everytime I pulled down a branch to tie the string on, I got a little rain shower on me! :)

We dyed some Easter eggs....(I think my kids are tired of me saying "look at me"...so maybe I"ll just stick to pictures of the back of their heads for a while...)

We're sort of an egg family - love eggs any which way. And with all these kids, I knew we'd have to dye a bunch. So we had 2 dozen eggs and 2 different kits. One normal kit and one "tie-dye".

The finished products! :)

My favorite thing about library day - looking out into the family room and seeing my 4 kids totally enthralled with their new books! :) (Actually, looking at this picture now, I think Callie's actually reading my blog book, but that's okay - it's still a book!) :)

Rainy Friday

It's a rainy day here - so much for my plans to go to the zoo and strawberry picking! But it's been a nice quiet day just to hang out together. We went to the library and got some new books for everyone and then came home and watched ET (well, the big kids and David did...I've been updating the blog!) :) We're doing some fun Easter traditions today that I'll post about later, but it's nice to have a quiet day to enjoy those things together!

Our resurrection eggs have been different this year. I've been saving them to start tonight because our kids all like to open one a night (so we have to wait until the weekend of Easter) but the kids have been playing with them all week. It sort of reminds me of the Christmas nativity set. I'm not a "hands off" kind of mom where they aren't allowed to touch or play with them, so I have LOVED seeing them get the resurrection eggs out several times each day, open them all up, and tell each other the story of Easter over and over!!

Jacob got a new jibbitz for his crocs!! He was the FIRST one to fill up his marble jar and got to choose a reward - this is what he chose! Pretty cool right? It was SHOCKING that he filled his jar up first - I would have put money on Josiah - but he did! (Josiah's VERY close - will probably fill his in the next week or so). We've been working on these marble jars since school started. They can earn (or lose) marbles by doing extra jobs, being a blessing to someone, going out of their way to help/bless someone, etc. It's been a great way to reward them without "paying" for it. I was very proud of Jacob! :)

Time to Leave!

Much happier family when we all woke up on Wednesday! :) We enjoyed our breakfast of scrambled eggs, finished up the last of the pop-tarts, and walked down to the lake one last time in our jammies. It was beautiful with the sun shining down on the lake. We were able to get packed up and the tent taken down relatively fast - which was good because we could see the rain clouds and hear the thunder coming! We were MOSTLY packed up when the rain started (which was better than last year when we had to set UP our tent in the pouring rain!).

We had to stop about an hour into the trip home after Caleb threw up (it appears that he takes after Jacob - our other carsick child). We kept asking Jacob how he was feeling as we were driving out of the mountains on those curvy roads - apparently we should have been asking Caleb too! We finally got home around 1:30 pm - David took the topper off the van, showered, and headed into work. I put a movie on for the kids and then went into a flurry of baking activity! I had arranged for the choir to bring in food to rehearsal tonight to do a surprise celebration for David's birthday. I had to wait until David left for work though. I got the kids all bathed, then baked 2 peanut butter cakes (with chocolate frosting and reese's on top!), one pan of brownies (with marshmallow and chocolate frosting on top), picked up balloons from the dollar store, grabbed some milk from Publix to take (you can't eat peanut butter chocolate cake without a glass of milk!), and picked up a large nuggets tray from Chick-fil-A. Whew! Oh - and I did take a shower at some point in there too. It was fun to surprise David with it and we enjoyed ourselves. It's hard when his birthday lands on a Wednesday - which is a VERY busy workday for him and even more so this year with it being the Weds. before Easter - but we enjoyed celebrating him!

Tuesday

Playing war inside the tent (notice how Jacob is wearing his jacket over his jammies...and josiah doesn't even have his shirt on!)

We headed down to one of the trails - a 2.5 mile loop through the woods. (Jacob has a knack for finding and growing attached to "trash". Here's a soda bottle he found on the ground and filled with lake water and rocks. it's not in his mouth - just pretending so as to freak me out!)

David found everyone walking sticks and Caleb wanted one too!

I mean - is he the cutest or what? (We realized that morning that we forgot to pack the backpack to carry Caleb in. UGH!! He was a trooper though - walked most of the way!)

We passed this huge fallen tree and Jacob declared "that tree is 4 daddies long!" I thought it was hilarious that he was measuring it in terms of daddy! So they used David's walking stick to see - and it was actually 4 3/4 daddies long! :)

Found the biggest slug I'd ever seen...

Quick water break from the canteen (David's impulse buy when I sent him to buy a few last minute things before our trip)

:) Happy Caleb! Then I thought "this would be so cute to have all 4 kids on this tree for a picture" about 5 seconds later, and tried to get a picture....

this is what I got! It's amazing how quickly things can turn!

The trail came out to this beautiful part of the lake, so we stopped to take a break and play in the water for a bit.

After our stop at the lake, Caleb totally passed out on me and slept the rest of the way (my back was killing me having to carry him back like this!) He slept for 3 hours in the tent!

Painting some of the rocks that we found on the hike.

Caleb was napping, so David stayed with him while the kids put their suits on and I took them down to the lake. They played and piddled at the water for the next couple of hours. It was so great to see the three of them playing so well...with absolutely nothing but sand, sticks, rocks, and each other! No sand toys, no beach buckets - it was nice. But I was still sad that we weren't ALL there - I like for us to ALL be together and it frustrates me when that can't happen.

Dinner was sort of a disaster that night. I had brought some chicken breasts from the freezer that were in a marinade, but they were SUPER thick (must have been from a dolly parton kind of chicken!) and I knew they weren't going to cook through on our little camping stove. I had forgotten to pack a sharp knife so I couldn't really cut through them and slice them either. Also realized I forgot a can opener (who forgets to bring this on a camping trip!!! DUH) so that meant no green beans. The mashed potatoes turned out fine, but half of the kids wouldn't eat it, and the burned/raw chicken was just bad. I was so frustrated by the end of it. The kids were tired - they had been up until 9 the night before and were just worn out.

We decided to try and make homemade "roll in a can" ice cream to try and redeem the night. I've heard about this before and jokingly told David that if it didn't work, we were going to have to pack up and go home!

It didn't work. I don't know if our ice was too melty, or if I didn't use enough rock salt, or we didn't shake it/roll it enough, but it didn't freeze. I wanted to cry. We had s'mores again and got the kids in bed earlier. Caleb was still funky in the tent - he figured out how to flip out of his pack&play and onto our air mattress, so he tried that game for a bit, but finally settled in when the big kids fell asleep. David and I got to enjoy a game of cards and a few hours out by the fire to unwind and redeem the night for me! I hate having to still deal with behaviors and attitude issues on vacation, but I know it's necessary. I told David that I feel sort of bad making them get in bed and not just stay up late when we're on vacation like that - but it's because I know it turns them into monsters the next day! They were up super late the night before and we paid the price for it tonight. Sigh. You don't ever get a vacation from parenting! :)