Happy Easter!

(drawing courtesy of Bug).

After a fairly peaceful morning at home, we spent the afternoon at church, celebrating the ressurection of our Lord, and then had dinner with a bunch of friends.  I love that we have friends here who are pretty much our surrogate family since we live too far away to be able to celebrate most of the holidays with them.  And we happen to have a lot of friends who make really good food, too!  Maybe too good--I don't think eating big meals at this point is very intelligent on my part, but its so hard to resist when there is good food.

Spring Break Fun

I have not been good about taking pictures of our Spring Break this year, but did at least try to plan some fun things through out the week, although it ended up being a less exciting week than I'd hoped for.  Luckily, I don't think the kids minded.  I figured I may not be much fun the next couple months and really wanted to have one last crazy week with the kids.

We started off with a neighborhood BBQ Saturday afternoon--following some insane rain and wind and tornado warnings in our area.  We were just glad that it did stop and dry out so we didn't have 13 kids stuck in the house for 3 hours.  Instead, the under-10 crowd went exploring in the forest behind our house and turned up all types of treasures--a forgotten plastic horse, a rusty old can, an empty gin bottle, an old trap that still had the head of something in it--it was quite the adventure.  And its always great times when we get together with our neighbors.

We also watched The Music Man with the kids over the weekend--even though they thought some parts were a little slow, overall, they must have loved it because they've been having "band practice" ever since and planning their performance for Saturday at noon.

Monday we did my maternity photos, which the kids actually did really well for.  Carla's studio was full of things to keep them occupied between pictures.  And when we finished there, we had friends to meet up with at a park, where 4 kids then spent 2.5 hours pretending they were wolves and running wild through the trees and boulders.

Tuesday, we didn't actually have any specific plans and I hadn't slept very well, so the kids played for several
hours in the morning while I tried to wake up, and then we headed out for some shopping and a stop at Dairy Queen.  We got to put in a few of our vegetable plants that evening, and got our first moquito bites--I really was hoping they'd hold off for a couple more weeks.  We've been enjoying dinners out on the deck, but that is going to be ending rapidly since the kids both turn completely hysterical at the sight of a mosquito. 

Wednesday was more gardening and enjoying the outside, and then more errands.

Thursday, we FINALLY finished running errands.  The main objective all week was to find a dress and shoes for Bean--can I just say how sad it is to me that she is getting up into the sizes where it is a lot harder to find appropriate clothing.  And she's still so scrawny in the shoulders, but I like her dresses to be on the longer side, so we were having a terrible time finding anything that fit, wasn't totally ugly, or expensive, and didn't look like a prom dress.  Oh, and there is the fact that I was trying to steer her away from pink since she already has a couple mostly pink dresses for this spring, but that ended up being impossible.

When we got home, we pulled out the fabric markers and the kids made these shirts:

They designed them on paper first, and then drew on the shirt--all their own ideas and own work.  Bean's made a couple shirts at school this year, and Bug was dying to try it out, so it was a much anticipated project and I think they had a lot of fun with it.  I'll have to be on the lookout for more cheap t-shirts.

Friday we had a morning playdate exchange with our neighbors.  The little kids went to the neighbor's house and made paper bag bird's nests, while the older 2 were here, and made cookies with me.  I tried to talk Bean into some lemon bars because that sounded light and springy, but she insisted on our old standby--chocolate chip cookies.  We actually haven't been making these much lately since I'm not supposed to be eating raw cookie dough, and its really hard for me to resist, but I put a scoop in the freezer to enjoy after the baby comes.  That's really the only thing I'm craving these days, probably because its one of the only things I can't have.

Not a bad week--and we still have some fun planned in the next few days, too. 

Less Than 4 Weeks!

Even though in some ways, I feel like I"ve been pregnant FOREVER, its hard to believe that we've got less than 4 weeks to go.  And since Bean and Bugaboo were 11 and 6 days early, that could really translate into just over 2 weeks.  Crazy!  We've been taking guesses around our house, so if anyone wants to weigh in with a guess, bragging rights will go to whoever gets it right :)

I've never done maternity photos before, but I have a friend who is a photographer and she mentioned that I should get some done.  I started thinking about how I haven't gotten a decent belly shot this whole pregnancy, and how this is most likely the last time I will ever look like this, and how cute my kids are with my belly, so I decided to go for it.  We just took them yesterday, and now I have to go through and figure out which ones to buy, but there are a few up on Carla's facebook site for Expressions in Focus (or you can see them in my profile as well).  I love how the ones with the kids turned out, and now I'm really excited to do newborn photos in a few weeks, which I've also never had done professionally.

It's also nice to remember some of the beauty of being pregnant, because I'm at that point that I'm feeling VERY pregnant.  It's hard to sleep, roll over, get up off the couch.  My ankles swell up every time it gets over 80 degrees (which is happening a lot lately), my lower back gets "stuck" if I sit or lay too long, and walking up a set of stairs totally winds me.  This little guy is also doing a headstand right on my bladder, which is just not that comfortable when I'm walking around.  But it all just means that its almost time to meet him!

Spring Celebration

This year, we were gone on the first day of spring, so we postponed our Spring Celebration until the first nice weekend in April.  The kids had been asking for several weeks when we were going to do it, so they were really excited when we surprised them Sunday morning with eggs hidden around the back yard and their sand buckets with chocolate bunnies and new bubbles and sidewalk chalk and other goodies.

We tried something a little different for egg dying this year.  I remembered seeing a post somewhere (no idea where) about dying brown eggs rather than white and getting much deeper colors, so I got some of each and I am a huge fan of the brown eggs (that's what is in the picture above).  They don't work with yellow or orange and the purple and pink came out almost the same, but I love the colors, especially the green and blues.  Daddy-o thought it was funny because as kids, they raised chickens, and had lots of brown eggs, but begged their mom to go buy white eggs for dying each year. 

 The kids found way to many plastic eggs filled with junk.  Made them very happy.

 And they managed to eat pretty much all of it within a couple days.  We've all eaten a little too much chocolate lately, which really isn't good for me since it seems to trigger my heartburn and nausea.  So unfair since it also sounds REALLY good to me these days.

And one more shot of spring--its really hard to capture the beauty of the dogwood tree that is just outside our bedroom window.  In the early morning and evening, it almost seems like its glowing.  It is one of my favorite trees we have.

Preschool Carnival

 To celebrate the school's 10th anniversary, they put on a carnival.  It happened to be the Saturday right after we got back from California. Actually, that was part of the reason we flew in Friday night instead of Saturday.  Bugaboo was devastated when he found out we might not be around for the carnival, so we planned around it, and managed to get going just early enough to make it for the alumni and current student photo.

 Then, it was off for some carnival games.  Who can pass up a chance to pick the giant nose?  The kids had a great time, ran into several old friends, and we managed to pick up a couple good deals in the silent auction (although no art this year.)

The kids got their faces painted at the end.  The lady who was doing it was amazing.

 And we learned of  Bugaboo's goth tendencies.

Actually, now that I know all the tears and drama that come with the fact that face painting doesn't last forever, I won't be encouraging this again.  It did give us some leverage to get the kids to stop crying, though, since they could see the tears washing off the paint.

And the next morning, we were still left with a trace--doesn't he look like he's ready to join Green Day?  By the time we went to church, the eyeliner was pretty faint and we didn't get any strange comments.

8 Years

 While we were on our trip, Daddy-o and I celebrated 8 years of marriage.  I use the term "celebrated" a little loosely--we spent the day driving from Fresno to San Diego, but we did get have some of our favorite fish tacos for dinner, and we're still planning on going out just the two of us for dinner in the next week or two.

And a few days later, we stopped by the temple where it all began.  It's a little crazy to think that was 8 years ago.  In some ways, that feels like a long time and I don't feel that old, and yet, it does feel like a lifetime ago--our lives have changed completely in that time:  new jobs, a new family with 2 kids plus another on the way, and living on the opposite side of the country.  It's been a good 8 years and we're both still completely happy with the choice we made that day.  I can't imagine sharing my life with a better man.