Easter

Easter rocked this year.  No kidding.  It really was the best one yet.  We kept things pretty chill since we did have a two week old baby - but that whole week went really well.  Each night leading up to the Sabbath we watched the new Bible videos on lds.org about what went on during the week of the resurrection. We had watched all the videos before, but I think it really helped the kids get a better grasp on the events of that week.  On Saturday we had out neighborhood Easter egg hunt and then Sunday morning the kids hunted for their Easter baskets before going to church.  I took Leah and Graham just for sacrament meeting and then brought the three of us home for a nap while the others stayed for their classes.  The weather was so perfect this year!  We went on a resurrection walk around the neighborhood that afternoon where we asked the kids to gather things that reminded them of Christ and the resurrection.  We weren't too sure what had really sunk in but I was so impressed as the kids started collecting things. A lot of the items were pretty self explanatory; a green leaf to represent Christ coming back to life, an old rusty nail to represent his crucifixion,  a little piece of black plastic that Clara said represented the dark tomb and lots of other things.  Grady even found an old chapstick lid on the side of the road that he said represented the bowl of water that Pilot washed his hands in before he gave Christ over to the soldiers.  It had really stuck in their little brains!  We were so happy and brought all the items home to have them tell us about them.  Clara set up her stuff hers inside a hula hoop in the yard and then taped a little Easter sign she had made in primary on a piece of re-bar and stuck it in the middle of the hula hoop and put on a little Easter play for us.  It was awesome.  We sat out side with our new little baby chicks, Leah included.  I love teaching these guys about new things - especially things as important as this.  

   "We have to make very conscious decisions about how to remain in the higher realm, or dreams become disasters and life lives us instead of vice versa. The fire begins to destroy rather than refine. We must never lose sight of our dreams -- even though we may reach them by way of a different path than we had expected. We can learn to expect the inevitable disasters and disappointments of daily living with children. Instead of letting them destroy us, we can learn to make them tools for a triumph next time around. B. H. Roberts said, “There is no progression from ease to ease.   ~Linda Eyre

his menagerie

I just put Clara and Grady to bed.  On Gray's bedside table he has three containers.  They contain the following; 1 slug, 1 miniature grasshopper, 1 rolly polly and 7 snails.  I also have a bucket on the back porch containing two garden snakes.  At his pre-school graduation (sniffle, he shouldn't be so old) his teacher had all the children spell their names and say what they wanted to be when they grow up.  Grady said he wanted to be a farmer.  And I think he'd be a darn good one too .  Side note - all the other little boys said they wanted to be super heroes.  Grady said he though that was silly because super heroes are just pretend, but farmers are real life.  he's pretty level headed that kid.

I have 7 loads of laundry to fold.  cool.

spinach is good

Last night was perfect.  Byron and Karen came down for one of B's cousins weddings, so we had a little more help with the kids during the day.  Yesterday I mowed the lawn while B trimmed (and Grady walked around for probably 30 minutes raking the grass with his little yellow rake - not sure what he thought he was accomplishing, but he thought he was helping and he was working hard and so it made me happy), got in the corn down at the community garden, finally planted my impatients in the front, got in some bush beans - cause you can never have enough, and even did a little inside and made us all a healthy lunch.  Days where that much is accomplished need to be documented!  Remember when I could get that much done in a few hours?  Times have changed..... anyway, last night B went to the wedding with his mom and dad and me and the kids decided we needed to harvest some spinach.  We cleaned out a big bucket and picked and picked - Leah fell asleep in my sling, and even Graham was being a good little picker.  We filled up the bucket with water and then set up an assembly line - Graham would reach in and grab out a handful of leaves and put them in the bowl of water that Clara had.  She would rinse them again then pull of the stems and hand them to Grady.  Grady was manning the salad spinner and after a couple spins in that he would dump them out on the big towel we had spread out on the grass.  I had a cutting board and knife and got it all chopped up and into bags.  We worked hard and in an hours time had three big bags of spinach, cleaned and ready to go.  This sounds mundane.  But it was one of the happiest nights I think I've ever had.  The sun was warm and perfect shining down on us, there was a little breeze but not too much to blow our leaves away - the air smelled like the newly cut grass we were sitting on and my kids were happy to be helping me. (!!)  It was perfect.