Spring activities

With spring comes lots of opportunities to be outside - after being inside all winter, who can resist being out in such beautiful weather?!

Some neighbors gave us some bird house kits, so Laine and Penny put the first one together last weekend.

And this was from Easter Sunday afternoon - a great day with good friends.

Pelican Fun Run 2014

The girls' school had their 2nd annual Pelican Fun Run a few weeks ago.  It is held at the local Christian high school.

This year the kids raised money to help build a new science building.  They raised more than they expected, and had a great time the afternoon of the run.

Here's Laine first grade class all lined up and ready to begin.

Mead and her buddy Mary logged almost 2 miles this year!

And Cole walked the entire time too - about a mile and a half in all.

He keeps asking if we can have another fun run :-)  I think he loved the excitement, and especially the chocolate chip cookie he got when it was over!

Happy Easter!

Easter weekend - two days off of school, and lots to celebrate!  In between Good Friday and Easter Sunday we did an Easter egg hunt with the kids.

Each one had their own colors of eggs to find.

Lots of excitement,

running, 

searching, 

and success!

Back inside to check out their loot.

Sunday morning the kids got themselves all ready - plenty of time to take an Easter picture before church.

And, of course, a silly picture followed the composed one.  Love these kids to pieces!!

Happy haircut

It's that time of year when Cole starts sweating... all the time.

We let him grow his hair out over the winter, and I really liked it.  But I don't love when his head becomes a wet blanket.

So here's the new look.  Short and simple.  It'll probably get even shorter as the summer goes on, but this is a start.  Cole is not my best haircut customer - using the clippers on a moving object can be a bit tricky!

And here's some old fashioned digging in the dirt, creating mud, etc.  Bring on the messy outdoors!

Reading

Mead has begun bringing home little books from school to help her work on her reading skills.  It's been really fun to see her trying to sound out new words and remember familiar ones.

Hopefully sometime soon Mead will join Laine as an able reader.

Even though Laine can read it's still fun to have story time as a family.  Each of the kids picks out a book (or a chapter) after we read Bible story, and we spending time reading together.

And here's Cole.  Just a great shot from church the other night while we were waiting for the band Ordinary Time to begin playing.  He's so much fun!

Curly hair and card games

Laine recently asked me to buy her some foam rollers so she could curl her hair.  $3.00 later, here they are!

She slept in them overnight, and her hair turned out so cute in the morning!

I grew up playing cards games, thanks to my mom's love of games.  And now my kids are learning to love games too.

So fun to see the kids playing cards together - and most of the time they can easily convince me to join them.  I'm a sucker for family game time!

Spring Break 2014

The kids and I took a road trip for spring break this year.  We left on Saturday and started driving to NC to visit family and friends.

The first night we stayed in Nashville with friends from seminary (also college and post college - lots of overlap!).  My kids loved making new friends with their kids.  Laine and their eldest boy were just babies when they last saw each other.

Next we visited my mom and Alex (and ended up staying an extra night thanks to the stomach bug descending on Cole and me).  After that we made our way to my brother's house.

The cousins loved playing together - we went to a children's museum and hung out around the house.

Cole and Easton hit it off especially well - they are only 5 months apart.

The following day we drove across town and stayed with more friends from seminary.  On the way I took the kids to see a long-time friend from elementary through college.  It was fun to reconnect in person again.  Penny flew in that afternoon to join us for the remainder of our week.

On the way back we stayed another night with my mom - visited a local park on a windy but sunny afternoon.

On Friday we stayed the night again in Nashville to split up the drive and finally made it home on Saturday.  Seven nights away, 4 different houses, lots of people to see and meet.  What a week!  A big thank you to everyone who hosted us and put up with our chaos!!

(I will briefly mention the trauma of the stomach bugs and carsickness we experienced while traveling.  I'm trying to forget it and just focus on the fun we had seeing and catching up with everyone!)