Easter

I love Easter Sunday.  I am sure this comes up every year on the blog, but I think it is good to say it.  It is different than Christmas because there is not as much of the Santa Claus and presents hoopla.  There is the Easter bunny, but it is easier to not be distracted by that.  It remains a time where we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.  Isn’t it amazing to think about?  It is unbelievable actually to imagine.  While crucifixions in that time were common, it is still a horrific act.  What is unbelievable is that on the third day, Christ was raised from the dead.  As in, there was no body remaining in the tomb, no evidence of death remained.  Why?  Because he had conquered death.  Why?  For us.  He took our sins with his death on the cross, buried them, defeated them, and rose.  We are ALIVE in Christ.  While we are not perfect, we are FORGIVEN.  So awesome.  And I am so glad my kids look past the Easter bunny, enjoy the egg hunt, but rejoice with us in church the resurrection of our Lord.

We got ready for church that morning.  It is one of the Sundays of the year that I enjoy getting a little fancier, and I was lucky to find something to wear on a quick shopping trip with Sandy.  The girls picked really cute dresses as well when we went out.  They also got “fancy” with curls for Ellie and a French braid for Madison.

 

At our church, we start the morning off with a breakfast.  A time where we come together, share a meal, and fellowship.  It is a joyful time and leads easily into the worship service.

After church, we headed to my parents house for Easter lunch and afternoon family fun.  The day had promised rain - 90% chance! - pretty much all week, but God had other plans.  He gave us a windy, but nice Easter day to enjoy outside.  This year, Jeremy's mom joined us.  It was good to have her with us and nice to just be able to settle in at one location as well.  We also had another special guest, Mary, who joined us because her dad was in the hospital, and Nate and Jen were helping keep her occupied and her mind off of it.  We took the mandatory pictures this year as our hair fought the wind.

After lunch, we had the Easter egg hunt.  Some eggs were hidden a little too well, but I think we did manage to find them all this year.

Then, we wasted little time before breaking in mom and dad's new volleyball net.  We have enough people that are old enough that we can play a decent game.  It was guys versus girls for the first game.  (Girls lost.)  Then, we mixed up the teams.  (My team lost again.... must be me.)  It was a lot of fun.

These are just a few more pictures of the day.  It was good to be together as a family... especially with nice weather!  We used the zipline again today for the first time in awhile.  The kids enjoyed that and can even help pull each other now.

  

May you live with the joy of the resurrection in your heart throughout the year.

Spring Break

Spring break this year was late.  I noticed in 2019, it is even later in April.  (Why did I notice this?  Well, I was scanning the school calendar for some reason today.)  We didn't plan a trip anywhere, but that was okay with me.  I did want to do at least one legitimate, get out of Wayne County kind of thing though.  That came on Friday.  We started the week out slowly, just hung around the house doing our thing.  We may have ventured out to the grocery store or the library, but nowhere major.  The girls enjoyed getting to play together with their toys again.  That meant the house - well, the living room - was in a major state of messiness for these two days.  Because I am me, I am pretty sure I made them clean it up every day, but I may have relaxed this a bit for spring break.

On Tuesday, Grandma DeeDee took all the local grandkids to see the movie A Dog's Purpose at the dollar theater.  They had a great time; she even bought them popcorn!  She met me at the park for Madison's softball practice.  The other kids wanted to hang out and play, so they did.  After practice, she treated them to kid's meals at Wendy's yet!  What an exciting day!

On Wednesday, we took our first planned outing.  We drove to Ashland to play with our friends, Teagan and Everett.  The girls always take a minute to warm up, and then things go really well.  After lunch, Laura (their mom and my friend) and I went out to put together a little project she had saved just for us :)  We put together a jungle gym.  You know the thing you used to hang on at the playground.  That thing that is no longer allowed on playgrounds.  It is a bit complicated to put together particularly when the illustrations are mediocre.  But we persisted, recruited her husband's extra hands, and conquered it.  The kids loved it.  Here are her kids still playing on it in the evening after we left. 

On Thursday, we took advantage of the day to head to the Livestock Auction in town.  We bundled up, packed a picnic lunch, hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.  We said hello to pigs and piglets, scoped out the calves, checked for baby goats, viewed the cows from up high, and then settled in during the cow auction to eat our lunch.  After lunch, we grabbed some delicious homemade ice cream from Schloneger's stand.  Then, we rode home.  It was a good day.  Madison had softball practice that night, so we went there afterwards.

Friday, we headed to the Cleveland Zoo ... with Jeremy!  He surprised us by taking the day off work.  It was great.  I hadn't been to the Cleveland Zoo for about 11-12 years.  I remembered it being spread out, a neat rainforest area, and that was about it.  Both things still held true.  The coolest thing is that they had the vet clinic open to the public.  So, had we known, we could have watched them give an animal a check-up.  We missed it, but it was fun to see the equipment and imagine what it was like.  They both got to stand by their favorite animal - Madison and her flamigos, Ellie and the zebras

 They took a few pictures with us "riding" an elephant statue (kinda cut that off in the picture!)

They really enjoyed posing on the statues.

 And riding the carousel is always a hit!

Saturday.  This was a jumble of different things.  We dyed Easter eggs in the morning.  I ran a few errands.  I used part of the day to make food for Easter.

That evening, we celebrated my birthday as a family.  We went to eat at the Dutch Kitchen - they have a great salad bar if you haven't ever been before.  Then, we opened presents.  The girls were probably more excited about this than me, but I do enjoy opening birthday gifts.  Madison wrapped up a plate that had a picture on it.  Ellie wrapped up some of her lip gloss and nail polish.  Jeremy surprised me with really awesome nesting bowls from MCC Connections that I had seen.  I love them!  He also bought me two very nice knives to replace the two overused and damaged knives from my set.  These are much nicer and much sharper!  It was a good night to be together.

I will save Easter Sunday for another post.  It was a good break, and I look forward to enjoying our summer.  

Ice Skating

Since we missed the chance to skate on the professional ice at the Monsters' game, my mom decided to treat all the grandkids to ice skating at Alice Noble Ice Rink.  It was a lot of fun... with a few injuries.  The boys tend to skate fast and not care how much they fall; they also fall more than they probably should, maybe to cover up lacking skills they over-exaggerate?  I don't know.

Our first bad injury was Cale going down and hitting his head.  It is a serious possibility and why we make our kids wear bike helmets to protect their heads.  Cale just needed some ice and comfort, but it was a pretty good hit.  Lilli managed to bang up knees and elbows pretty bad, but survived.  Her love of ice skating kept bringing her out to the ice.

It was a fun afternoon of cousins chasing cousins, expert skating by Ben and Jeremy, and staying up by Steph and Erin!

That same weekend, we had Megan over for a few nights.  On Saturday night, we went and watched Joellen (from youth group) perform in the musical Singin' in the Rain at her high school.  I had not ever seen this musical, but it sounded like it would be entertaining for the girls and us.  And it did not disappoint.  The girls really enjoyed the dancing, outfits, and singing.  I don't know if they caught all the dialogue humor, but it didn't matter.  While a late night, it was a good one.  It may be the start of high school musical productions for us.

March

I have found my blogging to be lacking in these past months (years?).  I don't know why exactly.  (On a side note, my program I used to link to this website quit linking.  I don't know what happened and it is incredibly irritating.  I liked the program because I could resize and position pictures much easier. So bear with me, if it seems a little off.)  I still enjoy doing it.  I think I just don't make the time.  I have also found that March is typically the month that gets little love (unless Easter falls during this month).  I take less pictures, and I blog less.  The March doldrums perhaps?  At any rate, here is a post of the fun in March that we had...

We went to a balloon twisting workshop at the library.  I think they have some really fun programs that the girls really enjoy going to.  This was another one.  Technically, Ellie was too young, but they let her join in :)

Gymnastics... Madison took a six week gymnastics class in January.  Ellie thought it looked like fun, so she signed up for March.  It was just her and one other girl in the class, so the teachers let Madison join in for free!  So nice!  They had a great time running and jumping off the spring board, doing the bar, trying headstands, and more.

We took the youth group to a Lake Erie Monsters hockey game.  I think the girls had a good time; it was at least a good experience to go and see something new.  We were supposed to be able to skate on the ice afterwards, but didn't realize til we got there that they had such a limited supply of skates to rent (only 50... and I am not kidding).  So, we didn't get to skate on the ice, which was disappointing for the kids (not so much the youth though).  Grandma DeeDee made it up to them about a week later (see future post).

I chaperoned Madison's class's field trip to the McKinley Museum.  I was excited to go because I had never been there before, but I had heard good things.  It was neat.  There was a natural history side and a science side.  Both had some fun hands-on things for kids.  I would like to take the girls there and explore with them.  Madison poked her head out of a T-Rex, stood atop the steps, and had a fun time riding the bus with her mom.

We had snow!!!  Yep, this was perhaps the second, maybe third snow of the winter.  It was not awesome for packing, but hey, you could still play in it.  We didn't make it long outside because it was cold and windy, but we went out to say we were in it.

We had a March and April family birthday party, which was good, but more stressful than usual because the kids were all stuck inside.  And for some reason, they were all really wound up.  It went fine, just more chaos, noise, and distraction than usual.  Mom made me cream puffs for my birthday dessert!  Delicious.  My birthday is on Easter day this year, so it was nice to celebrate a little ahead of time.

And that is March in a capsule.  April updates will be coming.