Family Home Evening for Easter

For Family Home Evening this week it was time to use our Resurrection Eggs. First, I hid all 12 eggs and Abi had to find them.

Then she helped me with the lesson. I read the passage for each egg, Doug read the scripture that went with it, and then Abi would open the egg and explain what was in it.

For our activity our front room became a disaster spread with paper and stickers as we decorated our official Easter baskets. This year I decided to get metal pails from Hobby Lobby for us to decorate and use every year.

The girls had a great time playing in the stickers. I 'helped' decorate Maddy's while she made a mess.

Abi had so much fun decorating hers in secret so we couldn't see it until it was done.

The finished baskets...

We used crinkled paper instead of grass.. hate that Easter grass!

When we were all done Abi got to have an ice cream sundae with Easter M&M's sprinkled over the top!

Easter cookies

Abi and I spent some time this afternoon making Easter cookies. It was really fun!

We got to do a bunch of spring shapes and colors..

and Abi got to wear her new chef's hat!

Good Mail: Easter edition

Today when we got home from dropping Steven off at the bus stop we had a package on our doorstep. We were really surprised and were so excited to open it up and read the note. It was from my sister and her family and said that since we couldn't be at the family egg hunt they were sending it to us. My family gets together every year at Easter and puts eggs out for the kids. So, there were a bunch of eggs with Abi's name on them 'hidden' in the plastic pink grass.

Abi was thrilled and had fun sifting through it to find them.

Abi and her loot....

They had also thrown in a birthday present for me... some money to go to lunch and a movie that we just watched the other night and really liked. I was really excited.

Thanks Dan, Steph, McKenna, and Courtney! this was so much fun and such a surprise!
Steph, I am amazed at how good you are getting at surprises!!

Picnic at the Park

After school Abi and I went on our St. Patricks Day picnic. I packed us pretty much the same lunch as Doug's although Abi had apple juice instead of Mt. Dew. We packed it all in her new monkey tote from Targets dollar section that she will be using for library books so that we could carry the food in a green bag as well.

We walked over to the neighborhood park and set up camp behind a bench to try to shield ourselves from some of the wind. We ate and then she played on the toys for awhile. We love picnics so this was a highlight of the day.

this was the first time she decided to play on the 'spiderweb'

Our little monkey

On the walk home she was doing this speed walk thing sticking her elbow up really far. It was so funny.

Dr. Suess Day

It isn't officially Dr. Suess day until next Monday but I decided to celebrate it early for school. We read a bunch of my favorite Dr. Suess books and did some silly dancing to go along with it and then we read The Cat in The Hat and made Cat Hats.

Abi did not want to wear hers but Alisse loved it.

For snack we read Green Eggs and Ham and I made 'souper eggs' to give the a little more of a blob look like in the book. Souper Eggs are made with 6 eggs and a can of Cream of Chicken soup and are really good. It's one of Doug's favorites. Yesterday I realized I didn't have any Cream of Chicken soup so I used Cream of Celery instead. It did not taste as good but it was still pretty good. I added green food coloring. We had bacon for the 'ham'.

Both girls ate most of it.

We traced their feet and they colored them while I read the Foot book. If you can see the toes on the feet of the pink paper, you will notice that Alisse colored the ends blue because she had blue nail polish on her toes!

Then we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck and made Oobleck from cornstarch, water, and food coloring..

Abi wouldn't go near it. I wasn't sure why but a little while ago she finally told me she didn't want to get her hands sticky.. Alisse loved it!

...so I sent it home with her!

A little while after Alisse left Abi finally decided that the Cat hat was cool and then wore it for a while.

the headless Cat in the Hat..

When she did this all I could think of was those things dogs wear when they get surgery so they can't bite at their stitches!

Just for fun, here's a picture of Abi showing me how big of a mess she can make in the time it takes me to put on my socks.

Valentines: the rest of the day

When Abi finally started to wind down a bit we put on a video and everyone snuggled under blankets to watch it.

I ended up not asleep but in kind of a sleepy trance and I hear Abi say, "Surprise, I made you an angel cake!" I look over to see this...

and a lot of flour all over the counter and floor....but how sweet.
For dinner I made homemade pizza and this was as close to heart shaped as I could get it. I put a heart cookie cutter there while it cooked to keep that shape.

I hope you all had a great Valentines day as well!