Easter

I actually had my act together this year, and took time on Thursday and Friday to hard boil 4 dozen eggs for my kids to dye.  I figured we'd make time for all that on Saturday, but then everyone had a surprise early dismissal on Friday because of RAIN!!!!  (They were predicting 3 inches in a couple hours and possible flooding. We got... maybe half an inch?  It really wasn't nearly as exciting as I'd hoped!)

But with a long afternoon stretching before us, we decided that was the perfect opportunity to dye eggs, so we got right to it.  And then, once the kids were bored with that, I put on Peter Rabbit for them and heated up some frozen pizzas.  While they were watching, we tried another experiment I'd seen on Our Best Bites and been itching to try: Silk-Dyed Eggs!  You wrap them up in old neckties and boil them in water and a little vinegar, and the pattern will transfer onto the eggs, like silly putty and newsprint! Anyway, they turned out pretty good:

My absolute favorite is the paisley one on the bottom left corner

Easter morning the kids ran around finding their baskets (hidden in the basement this year) after they were all dressed for church.  I sort of like how they lined up on the couch here puts their baskets in rainbow order!

After church, the kids changed into play clothes and we drove straight to Culpeper to spend the day with Grandma and Grandpa.  They had an egg hunt all organized for the kids (and that really is the best word for it-- it was the best organized egg hunt I've ever seen!) and then they fed us (and fed us and fed us!) and the kids ran around outside climbing trees, flying kites, and getting rides on Grandpa's riding lawnmower (I may have taken my standard Sunday nap during this time!).  It was a really lovely day.  We took lots of pictures of it, too, but they're all Live Photos, which I can't seem to be able to post to my blog (what the heck, Google???).  But trust me, it was great!

Yay for Easter and spring and family and all that good stuff!

Changes

Last week as Danielle was picking up Theo and Quinn, she mentioned that she would be putting Theo into daycare next year.  She explained, "We need him to be in the same place every day so we can actually keep track of our schedule!"  This makes perfect sense, especially since a few days before, Tim TOTALLY forgot to pick up the kids and was over twenty minutes late, even though he works from home and lives two minutes away.  This schedule where we're constantly trading between me and Grandma watching the kids is definitely complicated for everyone.  (And I suspect that Grandma is less than enthused to be providing free daycare two days a week, plus shuttling the kids around on her off days.)  The daycare won't take Theo until he turns two, though, so Danielle was hopeful that I could babysit for those few weeks where work has started but Theo is still too young. 

I have SUCH mixed feelings about all this.  Part of me is relieved-- I can do WHATEVER I WANT next year!  It will just be me and Camille and Camille is SO EASY to take places!  We're going to have a blast together!  It will be so easy not trying to schedule all our other stuff into two days!  But part of me is also sad-- No more extra money coming in.  And I really will miss Theo and Quinn.

And then there's that loud, obnoxious part of my brain that keeps worrying, Did I just get fired...?

This'n'That

I feel like there are SO many other little things we've been busy with, so we're going to make them all into a hodgepodge, photo dump post!  Enjoy!

Colton's new post-church look.  I've started calling him Magic Mike XXX

Squishmallow pillows were on sale at Costco, so each of my kids bought themselves one.  Now we have...  a LOT.

Can you tell who is nervous about swimming lessons and who is overconfident?

Bentley after camping

Scooter has been molting, and getting these adorable orange feathers along his forehead-- so cute!

The kids totally let me sleep in one Saturday because they were busy setting up a "store" in Ryder's room.  SO FABULOUS!

Camille found the wolf ears from our trip to Great Wolf Lodge and shared with Theo!

SPRING!!!!  I LOVE these eastern redbuds!!!!

I signed Camille up for an Art in the Park class.  The boy behind her-- I am NOT making this up-- is named Beowulf.  I'm usually against most government interventions, but in this case, maybe someone should have stopped his parents...

Camille borrowed clothes from Casey so they could play outside even though it was wet.  When he saw her, he said, "Hi, Casey!" and they repeated that back and forth a bunch-- it was hysterical!

Kendra's friend invited us to participate in a fundraiser for Type I diabetes.  I had no idea it would be SO MUCH FUN-- we had a great time (and walking a mile was cake-- phew!)!

Another choir concert!  This was the one where people from the community can practice with us Saturday morning and then participate for the concert-- it's a lot of fun to suddenly have twice as many people (even if the risers do get very crowded!).  This time we were singing Rutter's Requiem and it was lovely.  So much beautiful music that I get to learn!

Just the Oratorio Society

Trying to make room for all the newcomers!

The Young Men (and their leaders) have been busy doing yard work projects to earn money for scout camp.  Bentley was pretty excited to get to drive this tractor:

And now that the weather has warmed up, Craig is back to working on the tree house with the kids.  Look at all they've done!

Tough Colton!

I love girls that can use power tools!

That was a pain to do!

Floor is done!  Now what???

This girl.  I'm not sure what kills me more, the Beauty & the Beast nightgown paired with the snow boots, or that face as she rides her Harley Davidson tricycle...  Either way, she's crazy.  But in an awesome way.

Back in the fall, I saw this gorgeous ceramic pot and fell in love.  We needed something to go where our poor deceased cherry blossom tree used to be, so this was as good a cover up as any.  And now I finally have something planted in it!  I'm pleased with the arrangement-- yellow roses, heather, snapdragons, and a couple other flowers I can't name.  Now we'll see if I can keep it all alive...

The weather is gorgeous all the leaves are unfurling so fast you almost think you can see it.  In on fast week, the view of the freeway has disappeared behind the foliage and am LOVING seeing green everywhere outside my windows!  Also faithfully taking my Zyrtec and trying to stay inside as much as possible and shower a lot to get all the pollen off me.  It's not easy being allergic.  But oh, that green!!!

Life is good!

I'm Dying 😂

A few weeks ago, Colton came home saying he'd had a bad day at school because one of the other kids stabbed him with a toy kitchen knife.  The kid had done it hard enough to leave a (small) mark, so this was unacceptable.  Craig immediately emailed teachers and asked that they get to the bottom of this.

The next day, Colton came home with this AMAZING card:

"Sorry Colton.  -Alexandre"

"Sorry for stabbing you"

Notice the detail here-- my favorite are the angry eyebrows!

This kid TOTALLY has a future with Hallmark.

My New Family Room!

In March, Danielle (the woman I babysit for) was asked to increase her work hours, which meant she turned around and asked me to increase MY work hours, too.  So now I babysit two or three days a week, instead of one or two.  And then her mother (who is their other babysitter) caught the flu, which turned into bronchitis, so they asked me to fill in even more while she was recuperating.  So I've felt a LOT busier this last month or two than normal.  (Which is also why I haven't been blogging as much.)

But on the plus side, I made a chunk of money and we were able to buy all new furniture for our family room, so that's been pretty awesome!

I should have cleaned the desk and waited for better lighting.  Oh, well.  This is why I am NOT a lifestyle blogger!

The whole thing has been a HUGE pain.  I bought the chaise lounge from a local lady-- she was selling it for a good price and it's from Pottery Barn (or Crate and Barrel?  I can't remember now-- one of those expensive stores that I never shop at), so it should last a good long time.  We found the couch on Target.com, but when it arrived, the whole frame was bent so we had to send it back and order it again.  All of this was a tremendous amount of work with lots of very long phone calls with Target and trying to convince them (successfully!) that someone needed to pick it up INSIDE the house and NO I could not leave it outside to be picked up!  And then I was so nervous that the next one would be damaged, too!  But Couch 2.0 was fine.  Phew!  And then I found the chair on Overstock.com, and it was on sale for $100 off, so that made me happy!

Also, in order for the electric recliners on the couch to work, Craig needed to install a power outlet into the floor.  (Well, I guess the other option was to have cords all over the floor.  That seemed like a terrible idea, though...)  He did this while I was in Seattle-- isn't he so talented?

I really like how it all came together.  And now I would like to NOT do this again for a very long time!

Colton's Birthday

Colton turned 6!!!  (Over a month ago!)  And now that he's in kindergarten, he actually has friends that he was very excited to invite over for a party!  So we had to indulge him.  I ended up just letting him bring two friends to the bounce house, and because of the way the timing worked, I brought Ryder and Camille, also, and let Kendra and Bentley fend for themselves at home.  Everyone had a wonderful time, and right when they were starting to get hungry, Craig picked up lots of pizza at Costco and we all met back at the house and feasted on pizza and then cake.  So that was a lot of fun!  Yay for Colton finally getting to have a party!

With Walter and Jack!

I was too cheap to fill this thing with quarters and make it go.  But Camille still enjoyed sitting on it!

All the pictures we took of them eating cake were terrible...  Oh, well...

A few days later we celebrated with Grandma and Grandpa.  Colton decided we were eating pizza at Mellow Mushroom, and then getting ice cream at Chaps-- I was thrilled because these are all my favorite places, too (and NO I did NOT influence him on this!!!!), but it did make for a bit of parking and walking and parking and walking.  But everyone managed just fine (yay for Grandpa's new knees!) and he had a lovely time opening his presents at the end of the evening.

He grabbed this one right away and said, This is probably clothes, so I'll open it first!"  Smart kid!

So cute!

And then his final present was a new bike, so that was very exciting!

Happy happy birthday to my big 6-year-old!