Awesome April and Easter!!

Of course April was Awesome because it was the month we celebrated Easter and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!  We also had spring break and a homeschooling conference two other things that I love!  So April flew by with lots of fun, traditions, and favorite things thrown in the mix!

We started off April fools day as also the first day of Spring Break!  So for breakfast we met the Mills downtown at Sluy's bakery for coffee and doughnuts. We also had Elizabeth over for a play date that day so she got to come along on spring break celebration.

 I spent most of spring break week and part of the week before working on moving things around. One change I made was to take all my baby memory stuff which was in the guest room and put it in my extra walk in closet in the master bedroom.  This used to be the storage closet for all the girls' extra clothes but I moved all those clothes bins into the guest room closet. Not ideal, but they have to go somewhere accessible as I change out clothes all the time seems.

 This was the state of the guest room for a good long while! Remember how it is hard for me to get projects done and do the day to day stuff.  Add on it is tough for me to get rid of things that I think I might need or that hold sentimental value and you have a recipe for really hard work for me. The room is picked up, but there are still areas I need to continue to go through and either get rid of or find new homes for. So this will be an ongoing project through the summer probably.

Olivia and Claire had dance that Monday night so Hans tried to play an April fool on Olivia (since she kept pranking me!). He put saran wrap and honey across her door. The prank sorta worked...

One way I cope with getting rid of the too small stuff is taking pictures of them.  It helps to ease my mind that I can look back at all the sweet little shoes my girls used to wear. And remember the pairs they wore out because they loved them most and the ones barely worn as well. Sweet memories of miles walked in all these little shoes.

That Thursday we decided that we had to have a little bit of a fun adventure so we headed up to Port Angeles to shop at Maurices, have lunch, and see the free Port Angeles aquarium.  It was a fun day. We went up with the Mills family and they brought Kohlton along. First we stopped to shop for the mom's at Maurices. I got a few clothes for me. Then we picked up Frugals for lunch and headed to the park to eat and let the kids play a bit.  Finally we went to the aquarium. It was a nice little aquarium with lots of helpful volunteers with great knowledge about different animals. They kids got to touch and explore lots of different sea creatures. Then we had to head back to town for Claire to have her dance classes. But it was a successful adventure!

When you try to take a group picture with kids looking into the sun it is hard to get a good picture! Haha!

 We had a game night with the Kopps which was really fun! We played games and then watched some college basketball games...some of the finals of the March madness.  The only picture I got was of Olivia sleeping during the game on the beanbag.  Watching basketball can make you tired!

I love when spring has sprung and the girls pick me flower bouquets! So sweet of them!

Aubrey drew this great chalk picture of Raelyn. I love it!

We had Kelsey spend the night so she could attend the Resurrection Garden Breakfast with us at church. It is always fun to have a sleep over.

Our church put on an Easter event this year and I helped to plan it. We served  breakfast, had a short talk from our pastor, had music shared by the kids and the girls were able to do a short dance with Ashia's dance group. We also had a jelly bean station for kids to make a jelly bean bag for them and ones to share with friends and neighbors.  And finally each family got to make 1 or 2 resurrection gardens.  It was a really fun event and I think the kids learned a lot!

And here are the videos of them dancing and singing.

My sweet friend Jodie is an amazing cake maker!  And she sweetly made me a cake for my birthday.  Yes, my birthday was March but she had been sick when it was my birthday and so she made it for me in April. It was super delicious and super cute! I loved it!!

In April I brought back our shepherd, Kevin, along with some new friend the donkey!  The girls would look for him each day and the card with a verse and sometimes an activity to do. They were searching for the lost sheep...the one Jesus came to save by dying on the cross.  Each of our lost and God desires that each one of his flock be found!  He paid the ultimate and final sacrifice for us so that we can spend eternity with him instead of separated from him.   The girls enjoyed searching for the shepherd each day (that I remembered to re-hide him).  I also read a-loud Amon's Adventure. A great book written from the time period when Jesus died. If you ever want a great book to read before Easter then definitely consider Amon's Adventure.

The girls are getting so big and soon the last two will be out of their hooded towels so I had to catch a picture of Rae in her towel one day after a shower.

Easter probably deserves its own post, but I already stuck the pictures in this one so it will just be one long post!!  One of our favorite Easter activities is dying Easter eggs.  So we always have to make time for this fun project. Olivia wasn't as excited about doing it this year and had a lot of school work so she chose not to join us, except for a few eggs. I dyed some of hers and her sisters got to dye some of hers as well. The girls had fun taking their time dying and decorating the eggs.

 

I always have them show their favorite eggs! This time they had a lot of favorites!

I love all the pretty eggs all lined up in rows!

And Olivia had to show one egg so I had at least one picture for our calendar of her!

 I love hand print crafts, but my girls don't as much as they used to. But I found this one and it was really fitting for this time of year so I had the younger 3 do it. 

 A lady from our church named Karol had a great idea to do a living cross this year. She and her husband made this cross and filled it with moss from their yard.  We met on Good Friday to share some scripture and singing and focus on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross.

We delivered the left over jelly bean bags from the event the weekend before to our neighbors.

It is our tradition to make a carrot cake every year and a few years ago I started decorating the cake because I had left over frosting from the sugar cookies we often do (this year we didn't get time to make sugar cookies). So this year the girls wanted to do it on their own.  And they did do a lot of it on their own.  It is hard for 3 girls that all want to do it all on their own sharing all the baking. I need to get them in the kitchen more this coming school year.  This picture was Friday night when we baked the cake.

Saturday was decorating day and we did lots of other baking for Easter dinner. Devilled eggs, lemon cream cheese cookies, and a few other things were on our must make list.

 

 Aubrey made the design on this paper and although I helped with some of the frosting the girls did most of it.  I love how it turned out!

 

Saturday the CMT team I am part of met to bring the flowers to the church and outline the cross with baby's breath.  The progression of this cross was so fun to watch!

Gotta have the night before Easter curler picture!

The last morning the shepherd had found his lost (very fluffy) sheep!

Easter baskets had squishmallow pillows and beanie boos, plus some of other fun stuff as well as candy of course!

Here are the Easter basket pictures!

Before church pictures with their pretty curls before they fell all out!

 Filling the cross with all the beautiful roses and flowers!

The kids sang this Easter morning!

 The finished cross!  So beautiful!

 And I had to get some pics at home before we headed to the other side of the water for Easter dinner with the Chadwicks.

 Olivia likes to ruin my group pictures with faces like these...little stinker!!

Hans was working, but I headed over to Kevin and Anna's with the girls and Stella in tow for Easter dinner and our annual Easter egg hunt. Dinner was delicious and the weather wasn't too bad for the kids to hunt for their color of eggs.

 My Easter flowers.  The small vase had some of the flowers from the cross that were removed.  The flowers were all removed and then delivered to elderly in homes and other people that could use some cheering and I got a small cup as well!

I love how our cats climb into small places to hide and sleep. Lilah sleeping in the linen closet.

The next weekend we had another fun weekend.  Hans was again working but I couldn't miss the annual homeschooling conference that I enjoy attending. So Thursday night after dance we headed over to Redmond to spend the night before my two day conference. Here are the girls being silly on the ferry!

Mary and Eric were still in town watching the boys for spring break so they came to the hotel to watch the girls for the day while I attended the conference.  It was nice to have good teaching and learning at the conference. Always one of my favorite weekends of the year. Vodie Bachum is one of my favorite speakers and once again he did not disappoint.

The kids had fun too!

The second day Mary came and got the girls because we had to check out of the hotel and took them to Liam's baseball game and then Kevin and Anna's house.  I took Olivia to the last day of the conference and she enjoyed getting to hear a lot of good science talks and hang out with some of her friends that were there.

Vodie!

 And then it was back on the ferry to head home from our fun weekend!

Another month in the books!