Easter and the Sacred Grove

My parents cam into town right before Easter.  We woke up the Saturday morning before Easter and the Easter Bunny had come.

 Candy, swim suits and rain boots...perfect combination.

 Right after the baskets we hopped in the car to head up to Palmyra.  My dad had never seen the church sites in upstate New York and my mom hadn't seen them since she was a teenager.  About 20 minutes from the Peter Whitmer farm the sun broke through and the rain stopped...Easter miracle.

I love the picture below of my boys far in the field next to that huge tree. 

 What's even better is what we realized they were doing way out there.  He has mud up to his forehead.

 The contemplation.

 We then drove through more rain to get to the Sacred Grove which was completely clear.  Easter miracle number 2.

 They were cetain there was a snake in those logs.

I love that my kids have been able to go to the Sacred Grove twice now, and I would imagine they will go a few more times before we leave here.  Very cool place.

Here and There

Since the weather is finally warming up, we've been able to go out...as in outside.  Amazing.

 We went to a little zoo.  Ava may or may not have a slight crush on the boy in the orange.  They tend to right very nice notes to each other during church on Sunday.  Some of them mention "love", others, "really like".

Then Christian had an Easter program.  His programs are the cutest thing in the world.  I love them.



Maria

This is Maria.  She is awesome.  I first met her a few months ago when our church missionaries brought her to our house for a discussion.  She was interested in our church at the time, but still didn't know very much.  From that time Maria and various friends or family members came to our house every Thursday night for discussions.  They were mostly in Spanish, so I did my best to understand everything that was going on and had Tyler fill me in on what I had missed.

 During the time we were teaching Maria, she taught me instead.  She had/has a lot of faith.  She had a lot of hard things happen while she was learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but she stayed very strong.  Anyway, Maria prayed to find out if the Book of Mormon was true and if our church is true.  She decided to be baptized. She asked Tyler to do it.  It was a really great night.

I'm happy to have the joy that the gospel brings to my life and I am happy Maria now has it as well.  Congrats Maria!

The chaos of my life

1.  The foot.  The blasted foot.  Well, it is healing.  We said "goodbye" to the hard cast and crutches and "hello" to the walking cast.  Tyler had high hopes of also saying goodbye to the walking cast at his appointment yesterday, but instead he gets to enjoy 5-6 more weeks of it.  What a joy :) 

Here is a lovely piece of stapled meat for you (sorry phone pic).

2. Christian turned 4.  He is turning into a boy.  I think 4 is going to be a good age for this kid.  He took a few friends bowling and had a blast.  He called uncle Gog to thank him for his cool birthday card.  After thanking him, he immediately asked him to send him a present.  :)

3.  Ava turned 6.  She had SPA party.  Since she is incapable of keeping her mouth shut about such a party, we had 15 six year olds at our house for the party.  Seriously. 15 screaming six year olds...wow.

The facial station.  So, six year olds don't care for facials much.  After the first two girls went and one almost dry-heaved and the second (Ava) started crying with it on her face, we quickly switched to foot rubs...which they loved and they still got to put cucumbers on their eyes.

The party crew in their jammies.

mid facial...relaxing.

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the nail salon...but it was dang cute!

Below were the two boys that the girls tried to scare away by yelling "make up" and teasing that they would put make up on them.

4.  Haircuts.  We were all due for a haircut.  We took Ava in on her birthday and she chopped off nearly 5 inches.  Tyler cut both boys hair.  This was Bennett's first time getting a cut on the top of his head.

He looks so handsome with it short.  I love it.

5.  Charlie.  Our newest family member.  Tyler has informed me that he counts as my 4th.

We have been thinking about getting a puppy for a long time and the kids birthday seemed like a good excuse.  So we loaded up on a Friday night and drove to Brooklyn to Puppy City.  Once we got there there was no turning back.  We found this little Shih-Tzu.  He is a golden color all over rather than being two different colors (like normal).  We found that very cute.  He has such a great demeanor for kids.  He gets tortured by my kids and still just loves them and plays with them.  He lets Bennett carry him by his neck and even do the wheelbarrow with him (we try to discourage both).

Besides these minor things, we've been working a little on the house and yard, which I hope to show someday.  But that's all for now.

Eventful month of love

It's been eventful around here. Mostly because of this...

 To make a long story short...Ty went to play basketball at the church one night (much to my dismay).  In the last 5 minutes of play, he ruptured his achilles tendon.  We spend the rest of the night in the ER (with a saint-of-a-friend at home with my kids) but only after Ty took the missionaries to Wendy's then to their house, 25 minutes from us.  A few days later he had to have surgery to sew the tendon back together and he has pretty much been in bed ever since.

So while he is out of commission Bennett fell into the corner of our coffee table to give him a nice bruise on his forehead and two black eyes.  You can't really see the bruising in this picture, but you can see that it is swollen by the space between his eyes.

 Well, those nice shiners were followed by a real doozy.  You can find it here if you haven't already read Tyler's blog.

Lastly, and likely the most eventful part...this independent, busy, into-everything, happy-if-he-gets-what-he-wants, sometimes naughty, little boy is now "sleeping" in a toddler bed.  Due to the unsafe nature he was catapulting himself out of his crib, we decided to avoid another trip to the ER and just put him into a toddler bed.

 He thinks it's awesome.  Mostly because his effort to be free just reduced immensly.  For his first nap he fell asleep right by the door.  I didn't have a childproof door knob and so I had to jimmy-rig it with twine.  But that night he laid in his bed and went right to sleep.  I thought we were golden...ha!

The kid is real persistant.  So at his nap today I took everything out of his room and closed the door (with a childproof doorknob this time).  It took a little bit, but after he'd been quite for a few minutes I went upstairs to open his door and this is how I found him.

I had forgotten to take a basket of dirty clothes out of his room...I told you he is into everything.

Mr. B man Celebrates

He had a birthday.

Numero Dos.

 We partied.

 We blew out the candles and ate some yummy cake.

 Then we headed to the alley where the real party started.

 It was serious folks, real serious!

 Mr. Independant takes his ball to the lane.

 and...CELEBRATES!

Oh, and the neighbors came to help eat the cake.