Easter

These pictures don't really require a lot of commentary. We had a fun egg hunt in the morning, and in the evening Brian's family came over for dinner. It was so much fun having them here and celebrating Easter with them.

The Easter Bunny hides John's eggs in hard places sometimes. Here he is, a little stumped:

Eureka!!

The boys got huge pieces of chalk in their baskets:

Reflections of Christ

This is a link to a video that shows some incredible photographs depicting Christ's life. They're really amazing...

Reflections of Christ

The Jumps a.k.a. Boy Heaven

Not far from our house is an area known as "The Jumps." There are several little hills and ramps someone crafted out of dirt and who knows what, perfect for riding bikes on.

The "middle" jump actually has two hills. You can see John riding it here:

At one point, John was riding up - but too slowly - and he started sliding down backwards. He went backwards and down in slow motion, saying "whoa, whoa, whoa" the whole time. It's a good thing he was laughing about it, because I thought it was hilarious and don't know how consoling I could have been while laughing hysterically. Once he was on the ground, he was laughing and kept saying, "I'm okay!"

Ben hasn't done any of the jumps on his bike yet. He's happy to walk for now:

Here's another pic to prove he actually did ride his bike too!

Behind the middle jump is the one known as "The Pro." The boys "posed" for me on top of it.

It's a lot steeper than it looks in that picture, and John hasn't taken his bike down it yet. Mommy is kind of okay with that. ;) Especially after seeing the wild looks in their eyes as they ran down it, half out of control.

Chris decided to do it his own way:

Chris had his chance at the jumps though. As it turns out, there's a "scooter-sized" jump as well. Chris would half ride, half drag his scooter to the top:

Then get himself all situated:

Then push off!

Watch those pants Skinny Hips!

After doing this a few times, he did the same thing again, but on the middle jump! Everyone say "oooooh!"

So that was our little excursion to Boy Heaven.

Ode to Spring

There's something magical about spring. The boys were outside on their bikes when I noticed our tree out front is finally really leafing out. Mostly it's still covered with those green caterpillar type buds that turn into leaves, but a few are starting to pop out now. Since this tree is in the process of dying, I started feeling a little sentimental about this. This may be the last year we get to see it leaf out in the spring. So I took this picture as a kind of farewell, and ended up taking a few more pictures too.







This is a blossom on our dwarf peach tree. We're very excited about this, and hope the few blossoms on this tree survive the birds. We planted this tree last year and this is the first season we're seeing fruit. :)

See how tiny this tree is? I think it must be about Christopher's size.

And of course my roses...

In case you're not as fond of plants as I am, here are a few pics of the boys.

A Prayer in Spring
by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!

No, we don't normally celebrate St. Patrick's Day. In fact, I don't think we've EVER celebrated St. Patrick's Day. But this year it happened to fall on a Monday with no school (I LOOOOOVE Spring Break, by the way) and it turned into the theme for our Family Home Evening. One of John's scout electives is to plan a party, another is to set up an obstacle course, and others specifiy playing different games with your family. Well, I like to combine scouting stuff as much as possible, so we made it all into one night and one activity. PLUS it was our FHE, so it was great.



We went to the local park and set up the obstacle course first. This is what we did. First you had to jump up and hit the GREEN ribbon tied to the tree. See it?







Then you had to grab whichever stuffed animal was yours and toss it into the green paper-chain circle. If you made it in the circle, you got a point.







Then you had to jump over the green "river." (This was originally going to be a rainbow, but we ran out of time and changed it to a river instead.)

Then you had to toss your gold into the pot at the end of the rainbow-turned-river. We used pennies. Everyone had five pennies marked in a different color and you got a point for each penny you landed in the pot. We should've put something soft in the bottom though, because every penny that landed in bounced right back out. I was the only one who got a point - and that was because mine hit the grass and bounced IN!

Ben is always eager to help. :)

Next was the frisbee toss. If you made it past the trash cans, you got five points. Mine didn't go that far, but I think John had pity on me because he decided that was worth "half a point."

Last was throwing a ball and a green plastic leprechaun hat (I'm not sure which toy the hat came from, but it really did look like a leprechaun hat) into a tin can that my mother painted with flowers and a rabbit. It was very Spring-ish.

See the little green hat flying through the air?

We had so much fun with John's obstacle course! Everybody was cheering each other on and having a great time. We totally forgot to total points, which I think was for the best. Everyone got the "prize" anyway: dessert!

Next we had our picnic. I made some of my rolls for the sandwiches. (On a side note, I used wheat flour for 1/3 of the flour, and I was nervous about what that would do to my yummy rolls. They were just as good. Hooray!)

John got to pick the dessert, and he decided he wanted "Monkey Bread." I'd never heard of this until just a few days prior. It was what they had at his last scout activity. So I emailed his leader Nylene and got the recipe. It's incredibly fattening and incredibly good. The recipe follows. :)

So that was our St. Paddy's Day party. A good time was had by all!

When you look at the next picture, you have to imagine the boys laughing and saying "ewwww!"