Miss Sassy Pants

I sure love this girl!

Easter Egg Dying

Easter egg decorating is not my favorite activity, but the girls sure love it. So, I decided to make it into a co-op. Luckily, it was warm so we could use the park to keep the mess outside. The girls ended up having a lot of fun- especially playing at the park.

This is Camille's egg of our family:

Drink Lemonade!

I came home from book club last night and saw this lovely artwork from Claire. I think it is so perfect in showing her personality. She doodles constantly, and is so witty and clever. 

An ice-skating lemon saying "When you are hot you might want the pool, but that doesn't help your mouth get cool, so drink lemonade."

Passover Feast

For the first time ever, we are doing various daily Easter activities/readings/Bible  to try and teach the kids the reason for Easter. I am using THIS resource, and it full of tons of great information. I am also learning a ton of things I didn't know before. Just like our daily Christmas advent that teaches about the life of Christ, I want to make these activities an annual tradition around Easter.

Tonight we ate a traditional Passover feast. We went over the symbolism of the different foods, why Passover is important for Jews- and for us as well. It was a lot of fun, and actually pretty easy to put together.

I am so grateful for my family and family traditions! And, above all else, for my Savior who came and died that we all might live!

The Birthday That Never Ends!

What Ben actually asked for for his Birthday was tickets to the local theater. I kind-of had to get him that as well as the car, so last night we headed to the theater. As usual, they did a fantastic job- we are actually probably going to buy season tickets for the next season because we love their shows so much. Plus, it's so nice to go to the theater, but not have to go downtown. This theater is EASY- zero stress, and so much fun! I love that Ben gets excited about the theater!

We saw Something's Afoot- a spoof on Agatha Christie. Seeing all the ingenius ways that the characters were murdered one by one was quite fun!

Driving To A Hike

Of course, we needed to enjoy the WRX some more. We drove it up Deer Creek Canyon and went on a hike. It felt so good to finally be back in nature- it finally feels like spring, and it was absolutely wonderful to be outside! A lot of other people felt that way, too, as the trail was pretty crowded.

Claire only wanted to climb rocks. She got her wish!

Can you see them? We had them do some nature journaling up there- the view was spectacular!

You know it's a good hike when all three kids fall asleep (Audra is asleep next to Claire, I just couldn't fit her in the frame. Sorry, Audra!)

Grandma and Grandpa's Backyard!

The girls are spoiled at Grandma and Grandpa's, and they don't seem to mind at all!

Ben and Grandpa's Birthday

Yesterday was Ben's bog 4-0.

I have been planning this for almost a year. It started out with waffles (his favorite) for breakfast, and then Greek food (another favorite) for he and his family for dinner. We also, of course, made his favorite chocolate cake.

We happened to have a co-op at a coffee shop/game store, and we saw a game that I knew he would enjoy- Spy Alley.

I have no idea what is going on with Ben's face here. Maybe old age?

The girls had fun decorating the house for the Birthday boys, and insisted on getting a picture of them in front of this sign.

Then, for the big surprise:

A WRX! This is Ben's dream car, so I figured out how to rent one for Ben to drive.

We picked it up today, and he has 24 hours to enjoy it. So far, he is in love.

We drove up to Daniel's Park. Tomorrow we are going to go up to the mountains so Ben can get  a good feel for the car. We will see if this leads us to a Subaru dealership next weekend.

Oh, and of course- since we live in Colorado- while testing out the WRX we ran into a herd of buffalo. Because, well, it's Colorado.

The views are so beautiful up here!

 Oh, and this is the sub woofer in the back of the car. This car is very pimped out- it even has a radar detector so Ben can definitely speed.

Yeah, I pretty much nailed his Birthday this year.  Now he can't ever blame me for him not getting his dream car;)

Cloverbud Fun Night!

Camille is SO excited to finally be in 4H! And, tonight was Cloverbud Fun Night.

Audra, Claire, and I volunteered. Audra and Claire each were assigned a group of kids to take around to each station, and I then I helped at the rabbit station.

Everything was great, except for the boy in the picture above wearing the Hooters shirt. Yeah, not cool.

Camille's Writing

Admittedly, I am not the rock star kindie mom that all the other parents seem to be. Half the time I have no idea what is going on at her school, and I am totally OK with that. Over the summer I'll teach her to read, and that is fine with me. I don't need her to be writing novels at the age of 5.

But, I did think this was pretty cute.What would Camille do if she had a penguin as a pet: "I would play hide and seek."

So cute!

DUCKS!

My crazy girlfriend Joanne got some ducks to foster until they are ready to go out on the farm. Of course, we had to go and play with them. Camille was pretty shy with them, but Claire absolutely loved them. Then, the ducks climbed up on Audra's lap and tried to eat her shirt. It was pretty funny.

Finally, A Snow Day!

We have had the most mild winter- again. Last year was the same.

But, we got a spring storm that brought about 8 inches of wet, heavy snow overnight. Today is the first day of spring break for our district, so I thought for sure the sledding hill would be crazy insane as everybody headed to the hill- after all, there has only been ONE other day where sledding was possible, and that was a school day.

Because we have a trip in May planned, we still needed to get our schoolwork done. I urged them to get it done as quickly as possible so we could get to the hill before all the snow melted.

We picked up some friends along the way and headed to the hill.

I couldn't believe it, but we pulled up and there were 4 cars in the parking lot. WHAT?!?! Where on earth was everybody? I have no idea- there should have been well over a hundred kids there, but for the entire time that we were there, there were never more than 5 other kids besides us.

And, we were there for FIVE HOURS! I am not kidding- five hours!

The weather was perfect, the company was incredible, and I truly could not believe how much fun the girls had! They all said they were shocked when I told them it was 5 hours- they all said they thought it was like 1 or 2 hours.

How can things get any better than that? I would call that perfect.

You can tell there was a lot of sun! In fact, they all got sunburned. Oops! I didn't even think about sunscreen.

 Claire and Liesl spent almost the entire time building this massive snow fort. They were so proud!

Once the fort was built, they had a snowball fight. Super fun!

"I Do NOT Have A Mustache!"

Camille kept insisting:

I love Audra's photo bomb.

Then, Audra and Claire got in on the action and we just had fun making silly photos:

I so love these girls!