Easter-rific

Happy Easter! What could be better than a soft, warm, quiet, sunshiny Sunday to remember the Savior’s Resurrection? It’s never quiet for very long around our house, but we still had a good Easter. I managed to read the April First Presidency Message in the Ensign magazine and the 4 accounts of the Resurrection in the New Testament this morning WHILE the kids were awake. It was astonishing—I just kept reading, and I only got climbed on 3 or 4 times. Reading those scriptures helped me focus my mind in the right direction for Easter. “He is risen” is one of the most joyful phrases in all of the scriptures. Those three words hold SO much meaning. I am so thankful that He is risen, and I feel that joy in my bones especially on clear, sunny spring mornings.

While Jeff got Jay and Rose ready for our now-traditional Sunday morning walk, I quickly hid some Easter eggs in our family room. We went on a pleasant stroll in the sunshine.When we got home, we told Jay and Rose the Easter story [again]. Then we unleashed them on the eggs. This was the first year we’ve done our own Easter egg hunt, and it was not anything like I expected it to be.

My visions of two pastel-clad children trotting around, merrily tucking eggs into baskets hanging on their arms was rather far from reality. Instead, Jay and Rose kind of took turns following each other around and watching each other find eggs. We had to prompt them very heavily along the way, like “look under that chair” so they could find the eggs. It was funny. Every time an egg was found, they opened it right away and scattered the contents over the floor. We didn’t really use the baskets at all, and the whole egg hunt was kind of like clean up time, with us crawling around helping to gather up the scattered Legos. Yes, we filled the Easter eggs with Legos. I was going to save the Legos for Jay’s birthday, but the idea struck me and it seemed too perfect to resist. Lego Easter eggs! We tucked in a few small sparkly My Little Ponies into the eggs as well.

When I was growing up, we had a grand total of like 1 or 2 Easter egg hunts in my whole childhood, so I felt like I was indulging big time in doing one for my kids already. It was too fun to resist! My parents always said they wanted to focus on the real meaning of Easter instead of bunnies and eggs, and I get that completely. So I made sure we told Jay and Rose the Easter story lots of times over the week and then I felt great about doing a fun, unrelated little side bar to the holiday.

Grama Leslie and Grampa Dan also did a little egg hunt at their house right before our family Easter dinner.

The cousin! Layne is getting so big, that juicy little four-month-er.

As usual, I spent sacrament meeting wrestling with children and trying to keep them calm and quiet. As usual, they ended up fighting over my lap and they both ended up on my lap together by the end. So I only heard bits and pieces of what was going on up front. But the MUSIC was wonderful! The youth in our ward sang Christ the Lord is Risen Today with two girls playing a beautiful duet on the piano and the organ. That was a powerful moment. Then the closing hymn was I Know that My Redeemer Lives. Another power punch. So gorgeous. The direct, bold, back-to-back declarations in that song are Easter-rific. I felt so filled and happy at the end of that hour, even after all the small irks and tweaks from small children and their elbows.

Today Jay gave his first official talk in Primary, all about Jesus’ Resurrection. It was awesome. He stepped right up to his favorite microphone and started breathing deeply into it, relishing all the noise he could make simply with breathing. Then I whispered his lines into his ear and he said them with his lips touching the icky microphone the whole time. I had to work SO hard not to laugh up there. But Jay did a great job. I kind of cheated and used a pre-written “talk” from our awesome Nursery leader’s scripture stories folder. It was perfect for a Sunbeam talk, so I used it. Here it is, for posterity (just imagine deep breaths and loud, careful enunciation and you’ll have a good idea of how it sounded):

“When Jesus died, His friends were very sad. They put Jesus’s body in a tomb, which is like a cave. A big stone was rolled in front of the door. After three days, two angels rolled the stone away. Jesus had come back to life! When Jesus was resurrected, Mary was the first person who saw Him. She was very happy because Jesus was alive. Because of Jesus, everyone will be resurrected and live forever.”

At dinner time today when we asked Jay what it was called when Jesus came back to life, he remembered that it was called the Resurrection. I’m glad we managed to do the real Easter and the plastic one all in one day without confusing the children too much.

What is it about Spring?

Everything is so fresh and new! I love this time of year. When we got back from Missouri last week, the land had a hint of green to it. Greenery and warmth make me feel so motivated. And when I say motivated, I mean it—this week when I was cleaning the bathrooms, I went ahead and SCRUBBED the bathroom floors on my hands and knees while I was at it. Yep, springtime does weird things to me. I choose to embrace it! I’ve been home for one week now, and I’ve amassed quite the list of springy projects.

The biggest one is the back yard. Oh boy. Am I really doing a boring YARD post? Sorry, the yard has been our life this past week, so that’s what’s on my mind.

We’ve been chipping and chopping (and hacking) away at the yard for months now, and it’s getting there. We’ve cleared out most of the old landscaping rocks and paving stones, cut down a tree, weeded ourselves into oblivion, and mowed, raked, shoveled, dragged, stacked, and pruned the place down to this:

Ummm, nice. I know, I know. It’s not done yet! After all that work, it’s still patchy, thorny, dusty, and uneven. BUT it is LESS patchy, thorny, and dusty than it was last year! Next up is to fill in the holes, plant grass, construct some garden boxes and turn on the sprinklers. And pray that the agriculturally famous Yakima Valley doesn’t let us down in our own backyard.

Before [June 2012]:

After [March 2013]:

I have to explain about the tree. It was a hard decision to REMOVE a tree from our yard in this treeless land, but it had to be done. This tree had creepy, whippy branches and tiny, messy blossoms and leaves. It was not pretty. It was more like a giant weed than an actual tree. Ideally, we’d replace it with a real tree, like a maple or an oak (or maybe even an apple tree), but we’ll take this one year at a time.

Goodbye, tree. Jeff labored with a splitting ax for 2 weeks before he learned about chopping axes. I sure didn’t know that there were different kinds of ax out there! The tree came down in mere minutes under the right blade.

Jeff hacked, I stacked.

Our future garden, before:

ugh, I’m so glad that is gone.

Annnnnd after:

Weeding destroys me. I’d choose a 6 mile run any day over some cramped, rocky weeding. I have to confess that I’m pleased that I was able to force myself to do this undesirable task. Nobody else was going to do it! We’re going to put a long skinny garden along that whole 41 foot fence. This year we may not plant seeds in the whole 41 feet though. I’ve never had my own garden before. Baby steps.

The rubble, which we plan to use to build the garden boxes. Hopefully it looks better arranged around a garden than it did when it was buried throughout the yard.

I love it when Jay and Rose play side by side so close.

Poor little sister gets stuck in Jay’s old 50 cent yard sale jacket. She makes it look cuter than it is.

They want to swim in 55 degree weather.

Thirty hours

Before I’ve recovered too much from The Drive, let me tell you about it. It was 30 hours long. We passed through 8 states and experienced sun, rain, snow, hills, mountains, flats, trees, plains, rocks, cities, wilderness, clouds, and stars. I felt like such a mercenary pushing through all of that scenery without stopping to enjoy it. Late on a clear night in Wyoming I was dying to get my binoculars out and do some star gazing. Later in Utah I wanted to stop and stare at the gorgeous, rugged mountains. I resisted the strong urge to turn off onto a scenic byway.

When you have 1900 miles to cover and only two days to do it, you have to be a mercenary on the drive or you’ll never get home. We only stopped for gas, and we used the bathroom at the gas station. Thank goodness for Jay’s adult-sized iron bladder. We stopped 3 times on day one, and only twice on day two. It was hard. The first day there wasn’t much to tempt me, since we spent all day getting through less-than-scenic Nebraska. But the second day things started getting beautiful. I love this country. Someday Jeff and I will drive slowly through the whole thing and stop to admire all of the beauties. This time, though, I settled for some high-speed (you know, 75 mph) photography.

65 miles from our motel in Rawlins, Wyoming, and 14 hours into the drive, we ran into a nightmare. This is NOT something I wanted to see after a day in Nebraska. It started snowing and we rolled along at 3 miles per hour for at least half an hour before we picked it up to 20mph. We got to the First Choice Inn a whole hour later than I planned. Grumble. And all we found for dinner that night was nasty Burger King. Yep, Day 1 was pretty blah.

These kids were such troopers. They were so tired when we got to the hotel at 11pm that they couldn’t walk straight. It was kind of cute in a pathetic way.

Motel breakfast, and then back on the road by 6am.

Spring weather is volatile, especially when mountains are involved. We went from this…

…to this, in a matter of 50 miles.

Ha, I love this picture. We listened to Harry Potter on CD a lot, but we listen to that on almost every drive so I was heartily sick of Harry, Hogwarts, and the threat of Lord Voldemort. So on Day 2 we listened to pretty much our whole mp3 player of music. We started off easy with some Debussy and Strauss, which, by the way, is a very melancholy way to pass through Wyoming. Then we moved on to a little more energetic Mozart, Beethoven, and Piano Guys. From there it was all over the place, from Amy Grant to Queen. From James Taylor to the Mo Tab. You get the idea. I have a weird, incomplete music collection and it makes for some rather diverse playlists.

Chick-fil-a for dinner. My favorite, although food in general starts getting blah after two days in the car.

Aw yeah, sunglasses:

The clouds in Oregon were so swoopy-floofy-poofy:

I named this little guy Johnny. Johnny Raincloud. Hey, you’d start naming clouds too after 25 hours in the car.

A little more snow up in the Blues.

The children started getting wild and restless around 5pm on day two. They kept whipping each other with their blankets across the back seat. Sesame Street to the rescue! Everyone I talked to about long road trips with kids swore up and down that movies would save the day, but Jay and Rose only watched one or two Sesame Street episodes each day in the car. Maybe it’s because the headphones were too big, I don’t know. But they were pretty mellow back there most of the time without movies. There were some weepy moments too, of course, but they were good little travelers for the most part.

A blurry picture of the breathtaking sunset that I drank in as we decended from the Blue Mountains. Ahh, the sky just opened UP and it was a giant DOME of beauty with a buttery ball of sun sinking in the middle. I had to turn on some Mozart, Tim Janis, and Howard Shore to supplement the beauty of the scene. I always say I love the thick woods of the Appalachians best, but give me an enormous sky full of sunrise or sunset, and I’ll be happy too.

Give me my husband and my sweet kids and I’ll be happy anywhere! [yes I love cheese]

I’m so glad we’re done with that drive. It’ll be a few more days till we get all the kinks out of our legs, but it’s over and we’re home. Goodbye, surreal world of vacation and travel! It’s back to the real world for us, with real things happening.

Like gutters blowing down.

Home is where the Husband is

WHEW is the word, people. We are HOME. WHEW! We left Missouri on Thursday, drove two 15 hour days back-to-back again and got home last night. I’m exhausted, but it’s good to be in my own home again. I’m so tired of driving that I think I’ll just post the rest of the fun stuff instead of reliving that beastly drive today.

Four of the cutest Ninja Turtles I’ve ever seen.

My favorite Chase-cheeks.

Dani and the iPad were a hit.

So was Grampa Charley.

 

Rose liked playing dress-up. She was a Robin-Ninja Turtle one day.

 

Jay-Rafael and the creepy mask. It was too big so I bobby pinned the middle and it gave him creepy nostrils.

Rose calls Steve and Dan “Dee-Dan!” Kind of all one word.

The boys all loved Rose’s magnetic paper dolls. It was so funny to watch three boys take over dressing up the dolls in flowery clothes.

Ninja turtles all over the place!

 

I have to add this. Em and I really took it easy (she does have a newborn after all). We managed to watch 3 seasons of Chuck in 2 weeks (did I really just admit to that?). Why did I drive all that way and only watch shows? There’s something about watching shows with my sister that is just FUN. We love it. I can’t explain why, but we enjoy it. We spent two weeks passing around various bugs and germs so lounging was about all we wanted to do anyway. We did no projects (a first for us). But we did make lots of treats and talk and laugh and watch lots of Chuck. It was a perfect late winter/cold spring sister-bonding activity.

 

I think Chase gained a couple of pounds while we were there. Mostly in his cheeks. There is such a cheeky difference between a 4 week old baby and a 6 week old baby.

Buddies.