Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was also General Conference weekend and the first weekend of spring break. We made tentative plans to repeat the trip we took during last General Conference Saturday to Walla Walla for a family bike ride and lunch at Fast Eddy's, listening to conference on the way there and again on the way back (it's an almost perfectly timed driving distance from our house). The aftermath of our second round of Covid shots ended up being much more intense than the first round, so we stayed home. Jeff woke up on Friday morning feeling feverish, achy, and exhausted. Somehow my body handled both Covid shots like a champ and my only symptoms were a super sore arm and very slight fatigue (which could've been just general tiredness, not vaccine-caused tiredness, it was impossible to tell). But Jeff was down for a full day after shot #2 and only feeling about 50% better on Saturday, so we stayed home rather than venturing forth on a family bike ride. 

It was a slow cozy homey family weekend. On Friday I went on a lovely warm bike ride without a jacket for the first time all year. Before my bike ride, we moved the girls' bedroom to the basement in the former playroom. That was actually a big project. Jeff was out of commission from his shot, but after talking about it, planning on it, and cleaning up the massive mess in the former playroom, the girls were too excited to wait for Jeff to feel better. So they convinced me to disassemble their beds, carry the big wooden pieces downstairs, and reassemble them in the basement bedroom. Jay helped haul the mattresses down the steep stairs. The girls have so much more space down there, and they each have their own closets. It's like a cozy treehouse in their new room, with their string of twinkle lights looping over the wood paneled walls, shining onto the green floral carpet and blanket-strewn beds. I was pretty worn out after spending all morning moving them downstairs. 

Now we have a spare room. A spare room in a house this size is like a gold mine. What will we do with it? Time will tell, but currently I am enjoying having an entire empty room. It is a mental break walk past a clean empty room, even though I also feel a little bereft, like Rose and Amber left home instead of just moved to the basement. Their former bedroom was always full to bursting with life, art projects, laundry, and toys. The empty room is simultaneously melancholy and restful.

On Saturday, the girls built their traditional cardboard box-chairs for conference viewing comfort. Rose ended up hogging all of the biggest boxes for her elaborate creation. When I intervened in the name of justice, Rose "paid" Amber for the boxes with the use of her (Rose's) prized, never-shared paint set. So during conference, Amber happily painted the outside of the boxes while Rose sat inside on lots of pillows. We didn't do much else all weekend. We just stayed home and listened to conference. After each session, we took turns sharing three things we each remembered from that session. Family gospel instruction in our house always feels best when we all get to share our thoughts and insights. 

Between conference sessions on Saturday, I went on a run. Since we didn't make it out to Walla Walla and Fast Eddy's, we went to Bob's Burgers for milkshakes after the Saturday afternoon session of conference. Bob's is a mile and a half from our house, and according to the dairy-lovers in my family, has the best shakes in town. While they were waiting outside for their shakes, I took the car and drove over to Burger Ranch's drive thru and got myself a fresh-squeezed lemonade with fresh strawberries. YUM. It wasn't exactly ice cream, but it was still sweet and cool.

Sunday morning dawned so idyllically springy and beautiful that Jeff and I went on an hour-long walk together on the paved path behind our house before the first session of conference. 

On Sunday between sessions, we went to Grandview for Grampa Dan's traditional General Conference waffles. Jeff's dad is an exceedingly proficient maker of breakfast foods, with homemade waffles being his finest. We all chowed down on fluffy buttery waffles with strawberries and cream. The cousins played, the adults chatted, and then we drove home in time to watch the final session of conference.

After the final session of conference on Sunday, Jeff and I grudgingly filled 51 plastic eggs and hid them in the front yard for an Easter egg hunt. The early morning sunshine had disappeared under a moody gray sky, and the wind was picking up. Not ideal egg hunting conditions. We made it quick. Each kid could find 17 eggs. Usually they only get 11 eggs each, but Amber's kindergarten egg hunt nearly doubled our plastic egg stash. 

I really don't like all of the candy involved on the commercialized side of otherwise meaningful holidays. The kids always want to eat as much candy as possible when they collect their eggs. I always stress about sugar consumption because it's super unhealthy and sugar turns our kids into monsters. I detest how large quantities of candy turn me into a helicopter parent, hovering and controlling the sugar situation more than I want to. 

To combat this issue in the past, we've filled eggs with Goldfish crackers, raisins, marshmallows, and sometimes, when Jeff was more involved, jelly beans. There were always too many jelly beans. This year I thought up a crafty new plan. To fill the eggs this time, I got a bag of mini marshmallows and a box of Trix cereal. The mini marshmallows, used sparingly among the eggs, were a guaranteed win, in case the kids hated the Trix cereal (sometimes they take random inexplicable aversion to awesome breakfast cereals). Trix cereal is brightly rainbow colored and the pieces come in several different shapes. It looks just like candy! But it's puffy cereal so the sugaryness isn't nearly as concentrated as jelly beans, and since Trix came in a big box, we were able to scoop a lot of cereal into each egg. The eggs rattled mysteriously in a satisfying way when shaken, and the sugar content was at a level where I didn't feel the need to police the kids' egg consumption. In fact, they ate everything in their eggs right after the egg hunt, and it amounted to a simple bowl of cereal. Jay actually dumped his cereal and marshmallow-filled eggs into a bowl and ate the cereal with milk on it. 

It wasn't until Monday that I realized I never took an "official Easter picture" this year. I usually try to get a picture of everyone in their springy Easter Sunday clothes. But we were home in loungewear watching conference and didn't even think about dressing up. So I lined the kids up in the slanting golden sunshine on Monday evening and snapped a quick messy picture of my sweet bright babies. Happy Easter! I know that my Redeemer lives.

A volunteer cross country coach who helped us at our meets this season gave us these pretty pastel colored farm fresh eggs from his wife's chickens right in time for Easter. Yum, we loved them. 

The girls, cleaning up the former playroom in preparation for the bedroom switcheroo.

The new bedroom, view 1.

The new bedroom, view 2. We ended up ordering bedspreads for the girls. I have never bothered with bedspreads for my kids because when they were little, I dreaded having to wash thick comforters when midnight stomach bugs struck. Those concerns have faded. The girls were pretty cold in the chilly basement on their first night, so we ordered bedspreads from Amazon that arrived super speedy.

I let them each choose their own bedspread (with veto power--I vetoed Amber's first choice of a mermaid patterned bedspread). When the house is 70 years old and only partially updated (and when the window covering is an old quilt), matching bedspreads become unimportant. So they each have their own style and sleep in cozy cocooned comfort every night.

My tulips bloomed over Easter weekend!!!

Friday bike ride. I seem to automatically make this face when I attempt any photography while pedaling a bike. It is my version of living on the edge. Actually I hate taking one hand off of the handlebars on any kind of gravel/uneven road. But I was documenting my first ride of the year without a jacket!

Rose got quite creative with her General Conference box lounge chair, cutting a window so she could see the TV screen.

At one point Amber joined Rose in the box creation.

Almost immediately, I noticed that the marbled background of conference looked exactly like BACON. General Conference, broadcast from the smokehouse!

From far away, the marble strips didn't look like bacon; it was only up close.

When the girls moved into the basement bedroom and our playroom days ended, Jay took his Legos into his own bedroom. He listened to most of general conference on Alexa in his room, playing with Legos and lounging in bed. Every now and then, mostly for songs, he would emerge and join us out in the family room or in my bedroom, wherever we all happened to be watching.

View from my Saturday run.

Amber and her widespread jack-o-lantern teeth, somehow chewing gum.

Rose's hilarious box-profile.

Conference carnage: Amber's endless art exploration plus Rose's cardboard box building filled up the entire front of our house. They were mostly quiet during conference, though, so it was just fine.

Milkshakes at Bob's! My cute little strawberry lemonade snuck in there too.

Be still my heart. I may or may not have grumpily asked Jeff to wipe the table after dinner, but he did it and it made a huge difference in my sanity. The slanting evening sunshine streaming through the Easter lily and a helpful husband made such an irresistible scene that I had to sneak a picture.

Portrait mode on my phone is also good for flower portraits. The entire front of our house was perfumed with this soft Easter lily scent.

Easter Sunday morning walk in the country. We look tired because we were. But the walk was pristine.

Since this could be the final conference with footage of my uncle and cousin singing in the Tabernacle choir (both are no longer in the choir), I had to take pictures of their prolonged "fame" when the cameras panned across their pre-recorded singing faces. Uncle Wes, top center.

Cousin Preston, far left.

Grayce and Amber, cousin-buddies, sharing a bench and enjoying their waffle whipped cream confections.

Rose and Layne, also cousin besties, also with waffle-rific joy on their plates. These are the only two pictures I took of White family waffle time.

I really dropped the ball on egg hunt pictures. The girls started hunting eggs before I even came back outside after searching for Jay to tell him it was Time to Hunt. We made the girls pause and let Jay catch up, which made Amber cry and Jay smirk, but it was all discombobulated and whatever, it was over in like 15 minutes. 

Counting the bounty.

Post-egg hunt bowl of cereal! Rose followed Jay's example and poured milk on her plastic egg-innards too.

My secret to success.

The girls are always asking me to take pictures of their creations. The extra floorspace in their new basement bedroom seems to have morphed back into messy playroom. For now.

Would it even be a true holiday without a corresponding kindergarten headband?