The advent of Spring

On Wednesday last week we went to the library for Music Time, and it was nice enough that we were able to walk.  I'm so happy that Spring weather has come!  The girls insisted on wearing their winter coats, but the coats didn't prove to be necessary.  Before Music Time started, we played next to Hobble Creek behind the library.  There is a small patch of "woods," and the girls really enjoyed playing in them.  It made me wish we had more woods to play in.

Seriously, kids--and adults--can be so carefree in the woods.  Sometimes when we're out walking in our neighborhood, I get so annoyed with suburbia/capitalism/modern society/growing up/who-knows-whatever-other-influences that make me feel like I have to tell my kids to stop collecting rocks from other people's yards.  It makes no sense that all the rocks around us belong to someone, and they can't just bring a neat rock home with them.  I confess, sometimes I let them bring rocks home, but I know that if every kid who walked past a house picked up a rock from the neighbor's flowerbed, they wouldn't have any rocks left.  After all, we bought all our rocks, and Matt painstakingly laid them in our garden.  Ugh!  Well, that's why the woods behind the library were fun to play in last week.

After playing outside, we went into the library for Music Time and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.  I volunteer to help with Music Time, which helps me feel like I am really part of the library.  We sing songs, shake egg shakers, dance, etc.  It's fun.

Reagan posing next to Hobble Creek

Kirsten posing next to Hobble Creek

Saturday we went to the Rec Center.  Kirsten did Zumba, Matt did P90X, Reagan went to the Kids' Club, and I ran six miles.  I'm getting geared up for my big half marathon on Saturday!

In the evening we went over to Costco and explored the store as a family.  We got a membership the week before, and we are very excited about it.  Matt and I have rearranged our entire kitchen to make room for more food.  It's amazing how poorly we were using the space before.  Now we have an entirely empty cupboard just waiting to be filled with the food we will buy from Costco!  For dinner we ate a Costco rotisserie chicken, and it was delicious.

All of you have something wildly exciting to anticipate.  On Sunday my friend Jennie, with her family, came over to eat dinner and take pictures of our family.  Matt and I wanted some professional pictures to post on our LinkedIn accounts, and of course, we got family pictures while we were at it.  Jennie is so talented, and I can't wait to see the final product.  Then I will share some of the pictures on my blog.  That's what you guys have to look forward to :)

Yesterday we spent the morning at home.  The girls wanted to have a tea party with water, which is an activity that I feel like needs to be supervised by a parent.  I used to let them do it by themselves, but then they started making HUGE messes.  For them a tea party is essentially like playing with a water table, which I think is great, but since we're inside on the carpet, I'm hesitant to let them go crazy.  At any rate, we had a fun tea party that ended with all the goldfish crackers being dumped into the water and eaten.  Well, more or less.

In the afternoon we went to their friend Amielee's birthday party at the Kangaroo Zoo bounce house in Pleasant Grove.  They were so brave and independent.  I was so surprised to find them climbing up and sliding down without any problems or fear.  When we go to bounce houses, I usually like to jump with them, mostly because I think it's fun, but also because I've always thought they kind of needed me to help them.  Well, it seems like they've grown up and could do it all by themselves this time around.  They jumped with the other kids for an hour and a half, and then we all went to Amielee's house to have cakes and open presents.  There was even a pinata!  My kids were in heaven, and it wasn't even either of their birthday parties.

We'd been planning on going to the Rec Center at five, but when we got home from the party at 4:15, I started to have my doubts.  When Kirsten burst into tears after getting back in the car to leave for the Rec Center, my doubts were confirmed.  I got the kids out of the car, and we spent the rest of the evening at home.

After Matt, who was going to meet us at the Rec Center from work, got home from the Rec Center, we had dinner and a fun Family Home Evening where we talked about Easter and the Resurrection.  We specifically talked about Christ's arrival in Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and how the multitude cried, "Hosanna!  Hosanna!  Blessed be the name of the Most High God!"  Then we made palm fronds in the shape of our hands out of green construction paper and popsicle sticks.  We waved them around and pretended we were welcoming Christ to Jerusalem.
 

The tea party before it got too messy

This morning I cut pictures of Christ out of some Church magazines and had the girls hang them up on the living room wall to decorate for Easter.  I had read some suggestions in The Friend, the children's magazine from the Church, about ways to make Easter more Christ-centered, and I found some really great ideas, including the palm fronds and decorating with pictures of Christ.  I admit that the girls were initially disappointed that I wasn't pulling out Easter bunnies and chicks, but it didn't take them long to get excited.  I told them that they could hang the pictures wherever they wanted to, but with time, all the pictures migrated to one wall.  The girls started calling it their "Jesus ladder."  They even had a good portion of the pictures in chronological order, and when I noticed that, I helped them get the rest in chronological order.  I find our "Jesus ladder" very inspiring, and I like that the bottom picture says, "Finding new life in Christ," because I really do believe that Christ's life, Atonement, Crucifixion, and Resurrection are the only way for us to find spiritual and physical rebirth.

Maybe tomorrow we'll go get some Easter bunnies and chicks because it's fun to decorate with them, too.

The "Jesus ladder"