Easter Weekend

Happy Easter!  Did you all have a great time?  We had quite the weekend, filled with family and travels.

Our church's General Women's Meeting was broadcasted Saturday evening, the night before Easter Sunday. I didn't realize that I would be out of town the night of the broadcast and asked Lois if she would bring my girls.  She happily obliged and even sent them invites!  So cute! They were so excited to go on their date with Aunt Lois.


The Thursday before Easter I drove up to DC, went to the temple and then Steph, Maggie and Andy met me at the airport.  I dropped my van off in long-term parking and went back to Steph's place. (I picked it back up when I flew into DC Saturday night from Indianapolis.) We went to Steph's place to finish cleaning and packing.  I spent a couple of days with them to help them move to Indiana.

Ms. Maggie.


We left DC the next morning and I rode with Steph and Maggie to Indiana in their car.  Andy drove the moving truck.  Steph and I listened to a Beverly Lewis book....#1 in the Abram's Daughters series.  I have since finished the series.  So fun!

Here is their new home!  I loved seeing it.


Maggie's new room. 


Maggie loves her swing!


Andy and I unloaded the moving truck.  Though he did much more work than I did.


All empty!


For breakfast the next morning they bought donuts, cereal and half and half.  Yum.  They didn't have a fridge yet and didn't want to buy a big thing of milk, and have it go bad.




Saturday I helped move some boxes around and played with Maggie for awhile.  We had a nice time together. 




Steph and I went shopping that afternoon too.  After dinner Maggie went on an egg hunt.  It was so cute.  She helped me fill the eggs and hide them.  Then she came out and found the eggs, enjoying the whole hunt.


Pictures inside Steph's house:


Her fridge is so nice.  Love the steel handles!


Friday night Steph had most of the kitchen done and then finished it Saturday.  Steph and Andy are fast at unpacking!  They didn't have a fridge or washer and dryer, but those items were delivered and set up on Saturday.  Isn't her kitchen pretty?!


They will be making some changes to the family room (or whatever they are calling it...) but isn't it such a great space?  It's not pictured here, but they already have a new large area rug down that is super cute.


Saturday evening they drove me to the airport and I flew back to DC, arriving around 9pm. I drove on up to Baltimore area to spend then rest of the weekend with my family and Lois and family. When I went through security at the Indianapolis airport, it was so dead there.  There was literally one guy in front of me in line at security.  In the whole security area there were about four passengers. Isn't that crazy?! It was so sweet.  I've never been in a line that short!

Lee and the kids went up to Lois' Friday night.  Saturday he took a few of them to a nearby park. Lee also tried to go to the temple that day, but when he arrived he found out that they were closing early because of the General Women's broadcast.  He did go to the temple....just didn't get in to do anything.










We spent Easter Sunday with the Heits at their ward.  We enjoyed seeing Lois sing in the choir.  Lois and I heard Reed's talk in primary too.  Oh, and we sat in on Jeff's lesson in Gospel Doctrine.  He does a nice job teaching. 






After church we had a scrumptious feast.  Oh, and it was Reed's 9th birthday that day too!  What made the day even better was a visit from Darrell, Stacie and crew! I loved that we were all together on Easter.




Reed had a little party on Saturday, and we celebrated a little more on his actual birthday.






Lois made an awesome lemon blueberry cake for dessert. We should have taken a before picture as it was really cute.


We enjoyed Easter Sunday.  I'm thankful for our Savior's atonement and resurrection.  I'm thankful too that I can celebrate Him and what He has done every Sunday as I partake of the sacrament.

Pinewood Derby!

I am the new Cubmaster for our cub scout troop at church.  It's been a challenge starting this calling and I'm still figuring things out.  I think I will be the entire time!  I was put in at a crazy time--just two weeks before the Pinewood Derby.  Thankfully it all went well and I received lots of help from Lee and others.  I'm so grateful for willing helpers!

The night before the derby we went bowling with some friends and had ice cream beforehand.  It was a fun night!




On to the Pinewood Derby...Lee helped me make some "trophies" with some scrap wood.




I made some candy cars for each boy that participated as well.


Time to race!










After the cub scouts raced and our meeting ended, the activity day girls raced cars they had made.  Shanna and Haley enjoyed racing.


Initially Cal won third place for the derby, but two boys were tied for second place.  That pushed Cal to fourth place.  He was disappointed, and maybe more so because it was his last derby.








After we did a little shopping.  Shanna wanted to go to a shoe store and try on shoes.  No purchases made here, sorry Shanna.


Some rolls I made at some point...they were perfect!


Lee started mountain biking with a group of guys, and on his first ride with them, his bike broke. And he got a flat tire. Poor guy!  Thankfully he was able to fix it, and for not much money too.


Along the cub scout lines....I finally finished my training!  Lots of segment-video watching!

St. Patrick's Day and More

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Did you eat any fun foods?  Did you get pinched?

Before St. Patrick's Day, here are a few pictures from Art Night at the school.  I had a Relief Society meeting that night, so Lee took the kids.






Cal has been interested in Origami lately.  Lee bought him a beginners Origami set, but it's been kind of frustrating for him.  Hopefully he'll pick it up again soon. 










For a boy scout merit badge we had to do a family project.  Clark agreed to my idea of cleaning out some outdoor crawl spaces under the house.  They were filled with junk from the prior owner and we never got around to cleaning them out.  Like Elden's get up?  We did a little bit of yard clean-up too.  I love our trash pick-up here.  They took all the junk we left at the side of the road.  YAY!


The same day that we did the family cleaning project, I left early that morning to spend some time with my sisters Stephanie and Lois before Stephanie moved to Indiana.  Come back Steph!  We went to Ellicott City, Maryland.  It's a super cute town near where Lois lives. We enjoyed walking around, visiting shops, talking and eating!  It was super fun.  We all bought some cute things.  I bought your Father's Day present Lee.  He he he.  


Stephanie is expecting a baby boy the first part of August.  So exciting!


We ate at this yummy joint.


The food was great.  Loved the fries.  The roast beef sandwich and Au Jus dip were great.... though I realized I'm not a roast-beef-sandwich kind of girl! I do love a good Arby's sandwich though.  Go figure.


We had a lovely time.  Thanks to our awesome husbands for hanging out with the kids so we could have this time together!

Cal has also been doing a lot of drawings lately.  Love the lettuce stem inspiration!


I volunteered at the school the day before St. Patrick's Day to help with school pictures.  I should have taken a picture with Elden too, but didn't.




Saw this sign and thought it was kind of funny.  I don't drink Coke, but thought this was clever.  I'm so glad they didn't use "wifey".  I've seen that word floating around lately and can't stand it.  I told Lee to make sure to never refer to me as his "wifey".


St. Patrick's day arrived!  We all had green on in some way or another.  One of Lee's team members cut out a tiny four-leaf clover for him to wear on his shirt.  Not sure if Clark wore green....


Shanna and Haley made these fun shirts at Activity Days.  Activity Days is for girls 8-11.  They do fun crafts together, along with learning skills, teachings from the scriptures, etc.  Shanna and Haley love it.  Seems like Shanna didn't want her picture taken this particular morning.


Our last class for Financial Peace University was that night.  Lee and I got this cute arrangement for our friend Kim.  She is a member of the church where we taught Financial Peace and came every Thursday night to unlock doors and hang out while we had the class.  It was so nice of her to give up her Thursday nights!


Before class we had corned beef and cabbage.  My kids aren't too picky eaters, and actually LOVE corned beef.  There are some things they don't like, but they are old enough that if they don't want to eat the food items for dinner, they can have water for the rest of the night, nothing else.

Here we are after out last class!  Lee and I really enjoyed coordinating it, and are planning on doing so again in the Fall.  Our kids were sad it ended.  They were enjoying their mid-week movie night! Our group consisted of five couples and three young adults.  During the nine weeks of classes as a group they paid off $22,000 in debt and put $10,000 into savings! Pretty cool! Can you spot Lee's four leaf clover?


We found Haley that night asleep with her finger pointing at a word in a book.  Too cute.