Easter!

In an effort to make Easter a slightly bigger deal, we made "resurrection rolls" the week before the big day.  I'd made these with the kids before, but never heard of putting a religious spin on them?  So that was fun, and the kids were huge fans (obviously-- they love any and all sugar), so this is something we'll probably continue to do in the years to come!  And I sure do love a recipe as simple and yummy as this one-- I actually remember making these with a friend when I was probably fourteen and thinking they were so easy and good!  A huge win!

Weird lighting, but whatever

And on Monday of Easter week (which I'm looking up now and apparently that's called "Holy Monday"?), we did our FHE where we open plastic eggs with little objects inside that help tell the Easter story-- these were put together by my friend Carla so many years ago.  And I just love them.  We do this every year.  And I feel a little bad, because the kids have made/received other versions of this throughout the years in primary that are probably nicer than the one Carla made, but I just can't switch to the new ones.  Maybe some day.

The next week was super busy (more on that soon!), but on Saturday I managed to find time to hard-boil 4½ dozen eggs while most of the kids were at a farm painting fences as a fundraising project.  Unfortunately, we were so busy, we didn't manage to actually dye the eggs until right after church on Easter Sunday.  This meant that when we actually hid them after dinner, we had to wipe them all off with paper towels first because they were still wet and drippy.  But it was still fun!  (And in spite of Camille hiding one egg a little too well, we did eventually manage to find them all!!!)

So it was a good Easter!  And I'm still eating Cadbury mini eggs-- how are those so addictive?!?!?!

Where's Waldo?

When I lived in the FLSR, we had an all-ward Where's Waldo activity at a nearby mall and it was a ton of fun, so I suggested we do that here for one of our combined activities.  Unfortunately, with the whole "youth led" aspect, things occasionally got lost in translation and then became overly complicated for no good reason...  And we also had to make some minor adjustments simply because I didn't trust a bunch of teenagers to behave as well as college-aged kids (which was why we were at the downtown mall, where they can't possibly kick you out, as opposed to a Wal-Mart or something).  But in spite of all that, it turned out really fun!  😅

Here are a few pictures of our various ward members in their costumes:

Kip Krieger as a tourist

Kelly Hunsaker as a book lover

Jon Rougie as a farmer

Steve, Emily, & Lucas Morgan as Easter afficionados

Dale & Jacquie Layton as Rainy Day Ramblers

Hy Hunsaker as a candy lover

Amy (a garden gnome) with Megan (a fancy church lady)

Ah ha-- they found Kip!

And last but not least-- We found Waldo!!!

Jadyn worked so hard on this evening!  I was so proud of her!!!

Old Rag

Craig went with the Young Men to camp near, and then hike, Old Rag.  Kendra went to Ohio for her indoor drumline competition.  Bentley was still at BYU.  So that left Camille and I to have a fun Friday night together!  I asked her what she wanted to do, and she immediately made this list:

And when I pointed out that we probably wouldn't have time to do ALL of that, she countered that since #3 was Stay up LATE, we would have loads more time than we usually have!  Clever girl!

We still had fun, even if we didn't hit half the stuff on her list.  We had fried ramen for dinner, I made cookies (she helped), we watched The Little Mermaid (original cartoon, not the recent live-action-- I couldn't handle the way they did Flounder for that...), and had chocolate-banana-peanut butter smoothies...  It was a very fun night!  I have a good time with Camille!

The boys seemed to have a good time, too, although they were definitely having what we have termed Type 2 Fun-- which means, "Fun, but Also Hard Work."  That's fine, it's good for them!

You can see-- the weather was not ideal

Look at the tent behind the boys-- it was windy!!!

Goofy boys

Anyway, they spent the night.  It sounds like tent poles kept collapsing from the wind, so it wasn't the most restful of nights.  Colton had carefully packed all his clothes, and then at the last minute ran back into the house to grab a flashlight, and promptly left his backpack (with the flashlight) in the house.  So that was rough for him.  I think Craig let him borrow his sweatpants to wear over his jeans for the night, which was pretty funny.  He survived, though.  And maybe he'll learn something from that!

In the morning they had breakfast and packed everything up.  The parking lot for Old Rag was close by, so they drove there and proceeded to hike!  (I would like to point out that they needed tickets for the hike, and I was one of the grown ups who was poised on-line, ready to snatch my allotted four tickets the second they became available.  You're welcome, YM.  I'm the real hero of this story!)

l-r: Eli, Jason, Daniel, Truman, Ryder, Calvin, William, Gideon, Colton, and Harrison (not my nephew-- some friend of one of the YM who no one else knew) 

I guess this is pretty...

Old Rag is famous for its boulder scrambles, as you'll see...

How no one managed to get hurt is sort of a mystery to me, especially if you zoom in on this picture and notice...

This is wild!

I'm sure this is fine...!!!

The whole gang at the top-- they made it!

This is also fine, I'm sure!  (I love how he's got Gideon's hat now...!)

Anyway, they had a great time.  It almost makes up for the fact that they got home three hours late and completely stressed me out, since I had choir practice and didn't know what to do with Camille during that time.  And then I dashed off to work at a wedding, and Craig got to clean up all the camping stuff without me there making sure he did it right.  (He LOVES it when I do that!)  It was a busy day, but I'm glad they had a fun hike (and Camille and I had a fun Friday night together)!

Spring Break, Ohio Style (TM)!

My weekend with Sarah and Tracy kicked off our school's spring break, and we mostly celebrated that fact by doing VERY LITTLE.  It was so great!  I would sleep in and then go for a walk.  Come home, take a shower, and then take a nap.  I cannot recommend this way of living enough!  Occasionally we actually did something...

On Tuesday, I got together with my friend Megan and we took our kids to Tonsler Park.  After they were tired of running around, we walked to the popsicle store nearby, only to have a bunch of fire trucks pull in right in front of us!  As we got closer, we could see that all the employees were sitting outside, and the firemen were going in fully geared up.  We watched for a minute and then decided we could just buy ice cream sandwiches at the grocery store.  So much for that idea!

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom!
l-r: Truman, Calvin, Ryder, me, Kendra, Camille, Colton, Gideon, Bram, Peter

Kendra is a goof (but a goof with very cute earrings!)

Craig, Adam, Colton, and Camille and I all hiked Monticello Trails one day!

And then on Friday we drove up to Ohio to visit the Aveytuas!  I made a quick detour as we were leaving to see my favorite row of Eastern redbuds in full bloom:

I love these purple flowering trees so much, but I love even more that crazy hot pink tree at the end of the line!  Where did that come from???  It's like that every year, and every year it makes me smile.

The first thing that happened upon our arrival was Clayton took turns arresting each of my children.  He also had a couple cap guns that were in nearly constant use!  We quickly deemed that "Ohio Style" and from then on, anything that involved a gun was now Ohio Style™ 😂

He's still got a gun on him!

I quickly got back to campaigning for Favorite Aunt status!

How cute is London???

We all went to Neader's Diner our first night-- very yummy food, especially for a big family!

The next morning Craig made cinnamon rolls for everyone and then we settled on their giant couch to fight nap watch General Conference.

London makes herself comfortable!  I LOVE that the dress she's wearing used to be her mother's very favorite cow dress!  I have many memories of Rachael as a toddler asking if she could please wear that!

Oh, good, now we're shooting blind!  What could go wrong?

Here you can get a glimpse of London's devious side...

The Aveytuas have a bunny named Winky and my kids were THRILLED to get to play with a rabbit again!

Harrison cradling Winky

At one point Winky escaped from her cage and I kind of enjoyed watching all the kids chasing after her.  The magnificent magnolia tree in the backyard had just dropped most of its petals, so the kids were slipping and sliding on them, and then, a wild rabbit ran across the yard, too!  In my excitement, I said to Craig, "Look, a real bunny!" to which he responded, "Winky IS a real bunny, Alanna."  Touché, Craig, touché.  (Rachael finally caught her!  All was well!)

That afternoon, I made Grandma's green jello salad for the family.  Rachael had had problems getting hers to set, so she watched me to see how I did it differently.  (It turned out she was adding the cool water too soon, before the gelatin had been completely dissolved in the hot water-- an easy to mistake to correct in the future!)  And then we made mac'n'cheese for the kids for dinner, and after they'd eaten and Rachael's kids had been tucked in, the Rachael and Ian treated us to dinner at The Galley, which was really good.  Thank you, Rachael and Ian!!!

We left Sunday morning, so it was a very quick trip.  We tried to get some group pictures before we left, and...

This was our best shot of the kids.  It quickly went downhill from there...

Family Picture, Ohio Style™

And just plain chaos as they try to wrangle Clayton

And one with the grownups:

We got home in plenty of time to unpack and do laundry.  We tried to not be too sad that spring break was over, but getting up for school the next morning was a real pit.  Boo on having to actually adult!