Easter 2023

We had a wonderful Easter.  The Easter bunny showed up on Friday afternoon.  Jared was working early on Saturday morning so it was nice to get my photos of them with their baskets while everyone was here.  Alex, Owen, Weston, Savannah, and I went to a church Easter breakfast and egg hunt on Saturday morning.  We didn't have time to color eggs and make the sugar cookies until Monday evening, but I didn't want to miss out on it.  We basically had Easter weekend from Friday-Monday.  Savannah went to her ice skating party on Saturday afternoon and Alex and I went to the temple.

As I mentioned previously, Easter was pretty busy.  Savannah, Owen, and I got up early to practice with the choir.  We sang "Oh Divine Redeemer" and "He is Risen" in Sacrament meeting.  Savannah also sang Easter songs with the Primary kids.  The meeting was great.  Right after church, I headed home to start on the rolls and potato casseroles.  I pretty much spent the whole afternoon baking.  We squeezed family photos in there.  I finished recording some accompaniment for my Easter Devotional for after dinner.  We had our Easter meal with 3 large families, 1 couple with a newborn, 2 missionaries, and their friend.  So we had 22 (plus baby) at our dinner.  However, three of us combined efforts (made a little extra of our assignment) and delivered a meal to another family in our church.  So we needed enough for 25 people.  Our friends hosted the dinner, so they did all the cute decorations and tableware.

We had a great meal, played some games, did my Easter devotional, and had a testimony meeting by the fire that evening.  The whole day filled me to the brim!  

One of the talks during the recent General Conference inspired me to put extra effort into our Easter worship.  I knew I wanted to do something similar to our Christmas devotional with singing songs and reading the Christmas story.  So I made one for Easter, with Easter songs and reading passages about Jesus' last week as well as after He was risen.  I started with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then read a passage about Jesus washing the disciples' feet and admonishing to love one another. Then we read a passage about the sacrament and one about prayer.  The next was Gethsemane and the Crucifixion, followed by Jesus' resurrection.  Then we finished up with two more passages and songs - the first when Jesus appeared to His "other sheep" on the American Continent and the last when He appeared to Joseph Smith in our day. We did 9 passages and songs.  I ended up playing and recording the songs on the piano so they'd be in order and ready to go.  The recordings weren't great, but it worked okay.  Here are some of the passages:  

April Activities

Shortly after returning from Spring Break, Weston and Savannah had their school jog-a-thon.  They both did well.  I'm not sure the distance of each lap and they had to stop each time around to get a mark on a paper, so it's hard to judge their performance based on the number of laps.  They ran for 30 minutes without stopping to walk, so that's great! They were worn out at the end of it. 

Savannah made an Easter decoration at Activity Days.  Apparently it's not edible, but it looks yummy! 

Alex was still in Scotland for General Conference weekend, but we enjoyed watching without him.  I had my friend Nicole over for the Saturday afternoon and evening sessions of conference.  We watched a March Madness game in between and had dinner.  Alex did check in via video chat and took me on his walk with him.  

Alison had her baby, their 6th child, on Palm Sunday.  They named her Bethany Ann.  Alison was ready that whole week prior to Sunday for her to come, but I was hoping she'd wait until April since we didn't have a family birthdays in April.  When Bethany was ready, she came quickly on the Sunday before Easter.  She's adorable! 

Savannah has done some fun friend things this month.  She got invited to an ice skating birthday party.  It was her first time trying ice skating - hard, but fun.  Savannah's friends have been scheduling their parties around Savannah.  They know she can't do most party activities on Sundays (the ones that involve businesses), so they have graciously scheduled on Saturdays for her.   

We had our first "fun club" at our house with 7 friends invited over for crafts, snacks, and fun.  They painted rocks this time.  It was a messy activity, but they had a great time!  I was surprised at how many snacks they ate.  They ate all the fruits and veggies and goldfish in the container I provided, and I had to cut some more since not everyone got strawberries.  (They didn't think to share?)  They also had 2 cookies each.  A little while later, they helped themselves to large bowls full of the goldfish out of the box and finished it off (it was a brand new box).  They also helped themselves to full-sized candy bars that they found in the pantry.  I didn't realize they were doing this until it was too late.  Savannah said she tried to tell them not to eat them, but they grabbed them and ran outside...  one girl even helped herself to a package of Ramen noodles - she opened the package and ate it uncooked!  I was really surprised they thought they could grab whatever they wanted without asking. We will have to set some ground rules next time I guess.  They had a lot of fun though!  

Weston and Savannah had a crazy hat and sock day for school.  That's pretty much every day for Weston... but he did add about 4 hats to the mix. 

The kids helped make Easter dinner.  It was a little crazy that day, since we made dinner for 25 people! We provided 4 potato casseroles and 90 rolls.  I didn't take a picture of the rolls that day, but I snapped a picture of the 108 rolls I just made for a missionary zone conference luncheon.  I also made another 36 for guests at our house for dinner.  That's 234 rolls in 11 days - good thing I like making them!

Alex and I got to take a spontaneous trip to see wildflowers at Carrizo Plain National Monument.  Alex had a meeting cancelled for the day, so he suggested we head out to see the flowers.  I was happy to take the day off as well.  We had a long drive to get there and back, but it was good to get away from the normal busyness.  We didn't see very many poppies, but several varieties of wildflowers were in bloom. I loved being out there amongst the flowers in a peaceful setting, with just the "chirpies" doing their thing.  You'll hear them in the videos.  

I have to share one moment from the day.  The only thing that day that I needed to do was pick up Owen from volleyball practice at 5:00pm (Owen rides the bus from school to practice).  We thought we would be back by then, but we lingered in the flowers for longer than we planned.  Anyway, I had mentioned to Jared before leaving where we were going and that he might have to pick up Owen if we weren't back in time.  I told him to watch his phone around 4:45 for a message if we needed him to get Owen.  

We realized that we wouldn't be back in time, and earlier in the afternoon Alex asked if I had messaged Jared.  At that point I said I'd just wait until 4:45 since Jared probably was at track practice.  Well, at about 4:40 I decided to send the message.  However... we had no cell service at that point.  I tried to send, but the message failed.  For the next 10 minutes, I watched for a bar of service, but nothing.  I was getting worried, thinking of Owen being stranded after practice.  At about 4:50, I said a silent prayer asking for just a moment to get a message out.  Right as I said that, I looked down at my phone and saw one bar of service.  I quickly pushed "send" and the message went out to Jared.  I literally had about 20 seconds of service and then we didn't have service for the next 30 minutes.  Jared didn't even have time to reply back within our small window of service, so I wasn't sure he would get Owen, but at least the message went out and I figured it would be okay.  I was grateful for my quickly answered prayer - more evidence of God in addition to all the beautiful flowers from the day (God's paint brush). 

 

March 2023

Savannah was Sally Ride for the 4th grade wax museum.  She had one of the best costumes (even though I put in together the night before).  I ended up finding a pair of pants and shirt at the thrift store that matched each other and loosely stitching some paper labels on the shirt.  A friend of ours happened to have an astronaut helmet.  Savannah has been doing a bracelet club with a couple of friends.  She wants to start a "fun club" at our house for crafts and baking.

Alex and I had a date night one evening since we drove Jared, Owen, and a couple of the young women to a church dance an hour and 30 minutes away.  We went out to eat and then found a cookie place where we split a large ice cream sandwich.  We've actually been doing a lot of driving lately.  Alex and I got asked to be in charge of training the Mas and Pas for our upcoming 5-Stake Youth Pioneer Trek, so we had to drive to 5 different areas to do trek presentations.  We'll do 3 training sessions later in April and May when the Mas and Pas have been selected.  The presentations were essentially recruitment talks.  

We got our March temple visit in - still raining.  

Savannah had a play date with friends.  She hurt her hand while playing on a Ninja jungle gym structure.  We actually had it x-rayed later in the week because she couldn't bend her finger.  It wasn't broken, but some of the cartilage was swollen and sore.  

We put together a puzzle, inspired by a talk at church that compared indexing to a puzzle piece of temple and family history work.  

Savannah had a couple friends over to our house - it was raining, but they still wanted to jump on the trampoline.  Fun, but they were soaked!

We did our festive St. Patrick's Day meal with green Alfredo sauce on noodles, green rolls, peas, broccoli, key lime pie, and sugar cookies.  The boys left right after dinner to go camping on the beach with some of the young men.  Savannah went with me to a young women night put on by one of the other young woman leaders.  The girls painted rocks, had festive snacks, and played some games such as shaking ping pong balls out of a box strapped to them. 

 

Jared and the priests group put on a youth activity which turned out to be a lot of fun.  Groups had previously prepared and submitted short videos of different movie genres of their choosing.  Some of them were pretty good and others were interesting... everyone had fun making their videos.  Our boys are pretty talented with the video editing and background music and things.  Jared's group made a "Jailbreak" video, which won best video.  Owen and Weston did a "Dog's Way Home" video starring Kai.  The video starts off showing Weston and Kai doing their normal activities - going for a run, watching the news, and playing.  Then Kai gets dog-napped, but she escapes and finds her way home.  It's pretty cute.  It was hilarious trying to get Kai to do what we wanted though.  She doesn't like leaving anyone behind, so it was hard to get the video of her walking by herself (having to leave Weston behind and walking towards Owen with the camera).  She also wouldn't get up on the "wall" that she jumps off of to escape.  I thought she was going to bite Owen as he tried to pick her up and put her on the storage bench.  

The activity was a success, with popcorn, brownies, and short videos.  Judges selected the best videos, although each group got a "top banana award".  One of the young men leaders handed out the awards and did great on the spot about defining each award given.  

Owen got to participate in a Musical Theatre Competition of America (MTCA) for 2 days in Anaheim.  He got up at 3:00am to get ready to go.  We left at 3:50am to arrive at the school by 4:00am... except the gate was still closed... we backed out and waited for 30 minutes.  The actual time to arrive was 4:30am.  Anyway, they got on a bus and headed there.  Their first event of the day was at 8:30am.  They had a full day of singing, dancing, auditions, and hanging out at the mall.  He had to sing some solo lines to audition for a song and also perform a dance number.  He wasn't excited about the (required) auditions which were late that night when he was exhausted.  He also didn't like the song (that everyone had to sing for the audition).  He didn't go to bed until midnight, so it was a long day!  The next day started at 6:00am with more competitions and classes.   He learned how to do some stage make-up (the wounded arm).  After the singing and competitions were over, they had some free time in the evening hanging around a fancy hotel.  Several kids went to a dance, but Owen was kind and hung out with a girl who had an injury and couldn't dance.  (That's the girl he's with in the picture.)  He had so much fun that it was hard to leave, but I drove to pick him up late Saturday night (easily the most dangerous thing of the week driving in the crazy LA traffic - I saw a tire that had just fallen off of a big truck in the lane beside me and cars swerving to miss it).  I did make it there, and I went so he could be home for Sunday.  He gave up going to Disneyland on Sunday so he could keep the Sabbath Day holy.  He also missed the awards ceremony on Sunday, but he found out they won 1st place in one category and 2nd in another.  There were groups there from other states, such as UT, TX, OH, and FL, so it was a big accomplishment.  He really had a great time and enjoyed hanging out with his friends.  He was a good missionary and example to those classmates.  He had to explain to all of them why he wouldn't be there on Sunday.  Then he also shared his testimony in church on Sunday morning about his decision to keep the Sabbath Day holy, so he was a shining example to his peers at church too. 

Here's a few videos from the song they won 1st place for (the videos aren't great quality - just a recording from one of the parent chaperones).  Good luck finding Owen - he's often in the back. 

Alex missed out on the fun driving to LA... because he was on a work trip to Scotland.  He would live there if he could.

The kids had Spring Break this past week.  When Dad is gone, that means Spring Break isn't very exciting because the rest of us just stayed home.  I really needed a break from driving to various activities and from our busy schedule, so we didn't do much at all.  The "fun things" for the week were getting Blenders smoothies, getting hamburgers at The Habit, one day of shoe and toy shopping (not fun for me...), and making homemade pizzas.  Savannah had two friends over one day, which partially fulfilled her need for social interaction.  We did some spring cleaning too and the normal grocery shopping (but obviously that's not part of the "fun things").  

Why do these kids always have to eat?! 😀  They are better at helping with the chores these days.

We had some other sports this month, but I'll save those for a later post.