Easter Sunday

Ready for church on Easter

Easter Sunday is one of my favorite holidays. I love the true meaning of the holiday and I love spending time with family.  The girls were excited to get their Easter dresses from MeMine.

 We hosted a huge Easter dinner tonight with family from both sides.  We surprisingly had enough tables and chairs to accommodate everyone.  It was good food and good company.  After dinner we had the traditional Easter egg hunt with all of the kids.  The kids spent the rest of the night running around together and enjoying the nice weather.

All of the crazy kids

I love this picture that Two Fish caught of his Mom.

Easter Baskets

 The girls got bubbles, stamps, notebooks and coloring books in their little Easter baskets this year.  Red Fish got a unicorn bike helmet and New Fish got a new night light (that will hopefully convince her to turn out her lights at night.)  No candy because we had a family egg hunt planned.

Picnic In The Park

 It has become a firmly established tradition to go on "chicken nugget picnics" with Mimi in the park, on the floor in her house or anyplace else.  The girls insist that we must always bring chicken nuggets and eat them on a blanket or sheet.  We gave Mimi a set of plastic dishes that we always use on our picnics.  As soon as the weather got warm the girls announced it time for a picnic in the park so we gathered up our stuff and picked Mimi up for our first outing of the season.

Symphony Date

We spent Saturday at a children's concert at the symphony.  It was an awesome family day. Red Fish was overtired and struggled to sit through the concert but New Fish was completely captivated.  We never know who is going to enjoy the concert most. The last twenty minutes were presented with a silent movie in the background.  Both kids were completely caught up in watching the symphony play a long with the film.  The expression on their faces was totally worth the hard parts of taking them to these types of cultural events. 

After the symphony, we went out to lunch and then walked around the temple and visitor center.  It was a perfect activity for Easter weekend. It's always neat to see how the children are just drawn to the statue of Christ.  Red Fish lead us around the visitor center explaining every painting to us.  It was sweet to hear all of the things she has been learning in Primary.

Easter Eggs

 Easter came so early this year that I felt rushed to fit all of the Easter season acitivities in.  I didn't think we were going to find time to dye eggs.   That made me a little sad because I love traditions of any kind. We found the last free hour before Easter Sunday and my sister in law was nice enough to bring me eggs.  We dyed them out on the front porch in the sunshine.  I was so happy that we made the time because Red Fish kept talking about how this was one of her favorite things and that she just loves doing it every year. 

Ballet Sisters

The girls and I went with Lovely L and Miss C to see a ballet production of the Wizard of Oz.  Several of my young women were in it.  The girls wanted to dress up to see the show.  They were so excited that they couldn't stop hugging each other and laughing.  We had fun watching all of the dancers.  It's still hard to keep the girls attention for a whole show but getting easier and I think they really loved it.

My Little Scientist

Weekend With Family

We spent most of the weekend with Two Fish's side of the family.  Uncle M was in town with our niece "Uncle Riss".  The girls always call her uncle too for some reason.  Hilarious and cute.  We went to the aquarium, rode a ferris wheel, wandered a new sporting goods store, had two family dinners and spent hours running around with the cousins.  Two Fish and Red Fish took Uncle M skiing on Saturday.  It was a great weekend.

The pictures are bad because they are off my ancient cell phone.  My kids have probably told everyone under the sun (strangers at the grocery store- people in the hallway at church) that I dropped my cell phone in a toilet in Disneyland.  Now I'm using Two Fish's really old one and it takes horrible pictures but does function as a phone.

Jeruselem Dinner

White grape juice (I was afraid of spills), cataloupe, lentils, dried apricots, two kinds of flat bread (one was gluten free), cucumbers, pistachios, garbanzo beans, two kinds of hummus, almonds, walnuts, rice pilaf, grapes, yogurt, olive oil and vinegar.  We also ended up having a ham which is definitely NOT something Christ would have eaten.  

We have been trying hard this month to make the month of Easter more spiritual and really teach our kids about the true meaning of the holiday.  I think we did a pretty good job at Christmas so I've been trying to do the same kind of thing this month.  One of our ideas (that we stole from siblings and cousins who do it) was to have a Family Home Evening Jerusalem dinner and eat the kinds of things that Christ might have eaten.  We invited my parents to come eat with us and then it snowballed into a family event.  It turned out awesome.  The food was actually much better tasting than I thought it would be and we ended up with quite a variety since everyone brought something.  We ate without utensils on the floor.

After dinner we did a quick Easter story with pictures of the last week of Christ's life and Easter eggs that contain symbols of the story.  It's an annual favorite.  I never know if my kids are paying attention or not but then they usually surprise me with how much they remember later. 

 We have been doing a scripture countdown to Easter.  We've missed some days but we are generally trying to stay on top of it.  We always catch up.  We hang little tags on our Easter tree to remind us of what we have been talking about.  I downloaded the tags here although we have had to adapt a lot of the info so that our kids could understand what we were talking about.

I have figured out later this week that all of the Easter talk might possibly be backfiring.  I went to the grocery store with New Fish and she went running out of the store into the parking lot before I could catch her.  When I told her she almost got ran over she said: "It's cool Mom.  Jesus will resurrect me."  Um no.  Not "cool." I may have to change my Easter lessons. 

Spring

Duck, duck, goose

The weather has shifted on most days and the return of the sunshine has been a welcome relief.  We have desperately needed to be outside.  We have been to the park.  We have been out walking with the dog and painting on the driveway.  We have spent hours shooting bubbles at our dog, Blue Fish, who jumps for joy.  He loves bubbles and snowballs.  We have been doing watercolor resist Easter eggs and making Easter decorations to fill the house.

Teaching cousins the wonder of a big paint brush and a bowl of water on the cement.  He painted the whole driveway.

Art projects on the driveway

Playing in Uncle Doo's band

Wagon Rides to the playground- pulling three kids while walking the dog is difficult.

Bike rides on special dates with Mommy and Daddy

Bubbles and the bubble gun

Our dog goes crazy for bubbles

St. Patrick's Day

Our Sunday Morning baking project.

 This year my kids were bummed that no leprechauns visited our house during the night.  We don't have a cupid or a spying Christmas elf either- we are super lame.  No little men visit us on holidays.  We dyed our breakfast green (thank heavens that we had green food coloring) and made eggs and pancakes together.  Then we baked some cookies together and frosted them green.  We have been baking almost every Sunday morning because the girls love to cook.  Plus gluten free treats that taste good are few and far between. It's better to make our own (or at least prepare something from a mix.)

B Is For Birds

New Fish/Buddy B

 We did birds, the letter "B" and the nursery rhyme Bluebird, Bluebird.  It was a really fun school day.  We started with several bird books including Usbourne Beginners Eggs and Chicks and Eyelike Numbers- Counting In The Natural World.  We used feathers, pipe cleaners and googly eyes to turn letter B into a bird.  We played some little matching, sorting, patterning and reviewed more vs. less and directional words.  These two kids are crazy for file folder games.

We sang songs for a LONG time.  Hokey Pokey is especially popular and helps us practice left vs. right.  We also did Twinkle Twinkle, Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam, The Wheels On The Bus, Popcorn Popping On The Apricot Tree, Old MacDonald, Five Silly Monkeys, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Once There Was A Snowman, and Three Little Ducks.

We used pretzels to build a nest for marshmellow peeps and jelly eggs- super healthy.

We sculpted birds nests out of air dry putty.

New Fish's bird and nest full of eggs

We made bird feeders with birdseed and peanut butter.  We switched to an Easter themed sensory bin like last year.  The Easter eggs are very popular with the kids.  Red Fish and New Fish have spent hours playing in the rice.  I'm trying to decide whether to redye it.  I added white rice and I miss the bright colors.

I couldn't seem to keep the kids busy enough and they asked to go outside and paint since the weather is so warm.  I like to try and go with what interests them and it's hard for me to say no to an art project.