Sunday

It is a beautiful Sunday evening. I am outside enjoying the quiet as the children ride around. Lance and Jason are at a Stake Priesthood meeting and Maddie is sitting here next to me listening to an IPOD shuffle. As a four year old, she is enjoying it way too much. Lexi is making sure she is listening to church or other appropriate music. I have this vision of a year from now all of my children walking around the house wearing white headphones and speaking very loudly to each other. I was able to do the singing in primary today. I love primary. I can't help but smile in there. Maddie just turned to me and said, "You've got to listen to this! It's a good church one." This is one of those perfect moments that I long for all the time. I need more of them!

Butterflies and Easter

We had been observing caterpillars transform to butterflies over that last few weeks for school. It was such a fascinating process to see them grow, transform and eventually fly out of the cage. The girls started naming them but it was hard to keep track because they looked so much alike. All of them emerged except one which struggled for days. We wanted so badly to help it. Another one had a bad wing and never flew out of the cage so it died. It was a neat experience to release them on Easter. I would love to do that every year!

We had our annual candy hunt on Saturday and the children had plenty of candy. They had a lot of fun searching for the eggs and candy and we hid some king sized candy bars in hard places for them to find. Jason is starting to remember all our good hiding places and finds them too easily. Easter Sunday started with Lauren telling me she was not going to church, or putting her Easter dress on, or giving her scripture in Primary. Seeing as I had to be at church 40 mins early to practice with the choir, I decided I needed her to be at church but it didn't matter what dress she wore or if she gave her scripture. Five minutes before we needed to leave, she still wasn't dressed so I had to threaten her Easter candy. That seemed to give her the incentive she needed. I was already stressed because I had to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting and this was not helping the spirit of the morning. We made it to church, practiced with the choir, and then the organist didn't show up. So, I sat down, tried to push a bunch of buttons and get some sound to come out of the organ. Lance said the ones I pushed were a little odd together but at least we had a little prelude. The thought of having to play the organ was more than I wanted to do that particular meeting. Thank heavens for our Relief Society President who came up and offered to play as the meeting was starting. She saved my day. After that, having to give my talk and play for the choir was no big deal! It has taken me a week to recover from my "spring break."

Yesterday, I planted a few flowers and it had made such a huge difference to me. I love to see color around the house. We had such a beautiful day and the girls were in the sprinklers all afternoon. Lance has been sick a good part of this week. He had to be at church today because the Bishop and first counselor were gone and he needed to hold down the fort. The children have their testing for school this week and it just seems like school should almost be over once their testing is done. Time is going by so quickly!

Bodega Bay

We had a great weekend get-away at Bodega Bay. It was a last minute decision to escape for Saturday and part of Sunday. The beauty of conference weekend is it can travel with us on the internet and downloaded on MP-3 players as we drive. We left Saturday morning and traveled west to the coast. After stopping at our hotel, we tried to make it to Dillions's beach. We missed the turn and ended up at Bodega Bay. It turned out to be the perfect spot. There was the ocean, which is perfect in itself, small little pools of water, perfect for little ones and much warmer, tide pools ( we saw mussels covering huge rocks, sand crabs, and held a star fish that someone had found and was putting back), and large sand hills. The sand hills were fun to climb, slide down, and jump off. Everyone was entertained for hours and we can't wait to go back. We were able to swim at the hotel and enjoy the hot tub. On Sunday, the boys favorite is the complimentary breakfast and we listened to conference. It is such beautiful countryside to drive through and fun to see a new place.