Easter camping. and candy.

I'm not really sure how we ended up with no pictures of our Easter weekend, but maybe some will show up. We surprised the kids and took them to Nana and Pa's house in Gilmer. Jack Jack had been asking about camping and got the other kids talking about it. So Friday evening Jack's dad set up a tent in the back yard, found sleeping bags and a cot, helped start a fire, and got smores ingredients together. Nana helped the kids find chairs and roast marshmallows. She told them all kinds of stories about their dad when he was a kid and they were in heaven.

I'm really not sure how I ended up sleeping outside in a tent in a cot with a kicking child a couple of yards from a house with a warm bed in it, but I made it until about 5 am and then found a blanket on the couch. I remember being awake most of the night and being cold. I remember the smoke and dirt. But mostly I remember that it was fun being outside with the kids and seeing them so excited. They thought (and still think) that it was the best night ever.

Is it possible to romanticize camping? I love the idea of camping. I have great memories of the one camping trip my parents took us on when I was a kid. They had some persuasive friends, and we had great times on the Texas-Oklahoma border at the Red Rock Canyon. I have great memories of Girls Camp as a youth. I loved it so much that I went the required four years, two more years as a youth leader, and another year after my mission as a ward camp leader. I went camping a couple of times while I was in college, once in the winter when I thought I was going to freeze to death while simultaneously awestruck at the beauty of snow in the mountains in the moonlight, and once in the summer with a group of friends to help someone fulfill a rec management class requirement. I would repeat any of those camping experiences in a heartbeat.

Even the morning after "camping" at Nana and Pa's, even remembering the cold and the no sleep, just thinking about it made me happy. My girls already think it is completely unfair that Jack and Elijah will have myriad camping opportunities with scouts and the father and son's campout. I remember thinking exactly the same thing. Hopefully there will be more camping in our family's future. (Jack is reading this and shaking his head. No romantic ideas about camping on his part.)

And if the kids didn't receive all the desires of their little hearts camping, all their hopes and dreams came true Sunday after church when all Daddy's cousins arrived with their kids for lunch and the Easter egg hunt in Nana's front yard. Candy and quarters. Need I say more?

One of these is not like the others...

It's been a while since I've added a family picture to the sidebar, but here is one of our latest attempts at a family picture.


It pretty much went down hill from here, and when we tried another round for better lighting, we had mutiny and revolt.

I'll take these cuties any day.

Happy Easter

I just sped through the 600 pictures the kids have taken with my phone and wondered how to make a "movie" of them all so you can see what we've been up to for the past month. Lots and lots of living, friends. Also, lots of illness (undocumented in photo format), lots of laundry and meals, visiting and being visited, and many, many tender mercies.

I may (meaning I plan to) post some of the action of the past couple of months, but today I have some of the awesomeness of Easter weekend to share with you.

Exhibit A:

The mileage I have gotten out of these chicks is incredible. A birthday party craft which continued to a Good Friday/school holiday craft, candy alternative filler for plastic eggs, fun play for the kids, and a last-minute addition to Primary Singing Time today. As it turns out, I can relate chicks to a bunch of Primary songs, and not just the ones about spring, birds, and ducks.

Exhibits B, C, D, and E:







Ellen was waaaaaay to busy picking up eggs and helping the visiting cousins pick up eggs to stop for a picture, and I didn't feel like a picture of the back of her head. I have several dozens of plastic eggs accumulated over the past several years. We could have invited about ten more kids to hunt eggs and still had enough for everyone. Good thing there was no candy in them.

Exhibits F and G:

Although I have to give credit to my brother for our first introduction to the egg derby a few years ago, we have definitely followed in their wise footsteps in making this a yearly activity. Our second annual egg derby saw 17 contestants in a single-elimination competition for the strongest egg. The winner made it through five crashes uncracked.


Ellen and Uncle Eric were serious business here. Heart-y vs. E.C.

Ellen went into fist pumping and jumping in the air and whooping and hollering gleeful winner's bliss. It's the best when a kid wins.

This weekend we have loved having Eric and his family with us, Rebecca and her family to visit, and Grandpa over a couple of times. I missed my mom but felt her close, and I had many opportunities to hear my children remind me happily what the Atonement and Resurrection is all about. We get to see Grandma again and be with her and with Heavenly Father and Jesus forever. He lives.

Photogenic

Someone is not happy about taking pictures in the bluebonnets.

Still not happy

What? Are we really doing this again? No smile.

I guess he had his own idea of what a bluebonnet picture should look like.

Easter weekend and conference bliss

This is how we spent our Easter morning, after sleeping in and reading the Easter story over breakfast.

That little Harry Potter-like scrape on the side of Rose's head is the remarkably well-healing result of an encounter with the pavement at play group four days before. Maybe she's not such an accomplished walker as we thought . . . just yet.

And this is as close as Rose got to the dye -- playing with the metal egg holder while we used more reliable spoons.

Waiting for the pinkest egg ever . . .

And now we are enjoying General Conference! Isn't it blissful? That scene lasted about as long as it took to snap a photo. It was actually mass chaos, mess, and too much candy.

But what I did hear was . . . wonderful.

Play group Easter egg hunt

We have ourselves another accomplished walker:

Plastic eggs and candy= not interested in posing for pictures.

"Show me what you have, Jack Jack!" Hmmm.

It was pretty much over once she discovered there was candy inside. And I think she actually ate the Hershey kiss with most of the foil wrapping before I got it out of her mouth.

Happy Easter!

Chicken Little

The ramp, the tournament bracket:


The egg, the winner, the prize, the proud parents:

Castle Park

The Legacy Play Village is one of my kids' favorite parks in Lubbock. I haven't taken them there very often because it is a bit of a drive and it's a big place. However, there is only one way in and out, there's shade, I can take the stroller up in the castle, and Ellen can go down the big slide all by herself now. Plus, it's fun for adults, too. Jack and I took the kids with David, Chelsea, Bentley, Mary, and Luke over Easter weekend.

The two-story curly slide:


Rose loves going outside:


You can see the Lubbock temple spire on the horizon just to the left of the swing in this picture as well as the "recliner swings."


Jack Jack is all about action shots these days:

How time flies

That was then: Easter 2007, Gilmer, Texas.











This is now: Easter 2008, Waco, Texas.











That was then: Easter (and Blessing Day!) 2007, Gilmer, Texas.










This is now: Easter 2008. Waco, Texas.