Easter 2011

I apologize ahead of time for the long post, but we had a lot of fun this Easter! :-)

The eggs the kids made out of marshmallows.

Blake's entry into the newspaper's coloring contest.

Morgan's entry into the newspaper's coloring contest.

Morgan couldn't wait to get me an Easter present, so she and my mom picked me up some beautiful flowers when we went shopping last week :-)

We dyed Easter eggs.

Morgan got this little toy from someone at school and I had to take a picture...I actually got all the balls in the holes! LOL!

The dessert I made for Easter day.

The cake I made from the leftover batter from making cupcakes....I'll tell you more about the cupcakes in a bit :-)

What the kids woke up to...the Easter bunny spoiled them with what is mostly winnings of stickers, books, a couple movies and stuffed animals. :-)

Hunting for Easter eggs.

Blake carrying his like when he carries real eggs in from the barn...can't let it break! ;-)

Ready to watch TV for the 1st time since lent!! (With one exception...they watched The Jesus Movie the 1st week of lent.)

Ready for church! :-)

After church, was dinner and a candy hunt at my parents' house....can you see the excitement!?

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In the time leading up to Easter, I tried to do several activities that I found in Focus on the Family's 'Thriving Family' magazine to teach the kids about Jesus. Here is what we did:

The kids made palm branches for Palm Sunday and learned about how people waved the branches and shouted 'Hosanna' to Jesus at he entered Jerusalem and discussed what 'Hosanna' meant.

We baked bread another day and discussed how Jesus is "The Bread of Life". 'Just as bread gives us nutrition and sustains us physically, Jesus offers us eternal life and sustains us spiritually.' (Quote taken from the magazine.)

During the week we also did our Resurrection Eggs and read our books about Jesus and Easter. Thursday, we took a higher value of money and asked if the kids would trade it for a few pennies, which they wouldn't. We talked about how Judas traded Jesus for 30 silver coins and how he made a bad choice and how that must have made Jesus feel.

Then, Good Friday, we put a carnation in water with red food coloring and watched what happened. We read 1 Peter 1:18-19. We talked about how Jesus was a "lamb without blemish or defect" (the white carnation). And when he died, he took our sins upon himself (the red petals.)

Easter morning we made Resurrection Rolls. Unfortunately, Jesus was still in the tomb when the rolls were done and Morgan made sure to point it out!! LOL! OOPS! It was worth a try and they were DELICIOUS!

At my parents, we went over the Resurrection Eggs again with my nieces, so they could hear the Easter story in a fun way.

And we read Matthew 27:62-66; 28:1-4. I had the kids try to push a large stone and talk about how one even larger couldn't keep Jesus in the tomb.

And finally, the cupcakes!!! I made cupcakes and my sister picked up trick candles. They each got one trick candle on a cupcake and blew it out. Of course the flame came back, to their surprise, so they tried again (and again and again...). We discussed how Jesus is "The Light of the World" and that even though everyone thought Jesus's light went out when he died...it hadn't...he was still alive! :-)

Children's Program and a Busy Weekend!

What a weekend this last weekend was! With how busy we were, I know summer must be on the way, despite the continued freezing temps and snow! :-/

This is what we did:

*Thursday: The busyness started Thursday. I took Morgan to school in the morning and picked her up again after an hour to go to my husband's aunt's and do a spinning demonstration for a group of home schooled children that were coming to see the alpacas. They also went next door to my in-laws place to see their animals and have a chance to ride horses! Besides that they could feed the alpacas, do an alpaca fiber craft and end the visit with a yummy cookie! :-)

The kids and I spent some time after everyone left visiting then came home to rest and eat before Morgan's church program practice....a practice that I thought was 45 minutes, but was actually 2 hours! *sigh*

*Friday: We took off first thing in the morning to go to our local little city and do some shopping with my mom. I had A LOT of catching up to do on shopping since I hadn't gone in a while. We left at 8 am and didn't get home until after 3:30 pm...that's A LOT of shopping!!

Morgan had practice again that night, but knowing it was 2 hours this time I dropped her off, then went back to get her when it was over with ;-) While home and before getting her, I got Blake his bath, then Morgan's bath after I picked her up, so they'd be ready to spend the night at their grandma's.

A little after 8:00 pm, we left to take the kids to their grandparents', but they weren't home from their dinner yet, so we went to see Rich's grandma (and aunt and uncle who happened to be there.) At 9:30, we dropped the kids off at the grandparents and stuck around for about an hour before coming home ourselves...tired from the long day.

*Saturday: While the kids were with the grandparents going to see a movie and picking out their Easter chicks at Tractor Supply, I was cleaning, cooking, working out and doing laundry, trying the catch up a bit before my sister picked me up to go cupcake tasting (for her upcoming wedding.) We met up with our mom then headed back to my parents' for my niece's birthday party. Rich spent the afternoon cleaning the fire hall for the pancake breakfast they were having the next day, then picked the kids up from one set of grandparents' and took them to the other for the birthday. We got home around 9:00 pm that night and did our best to get some rest before the next busy day!

*Sunday: Morgan's program for church! She sang in both services that morning and was so tired that I thought she was going to fall asleep standing up! But the whole program was really cute and the kiddos did a great job! Both sets of grandparents, my sister and one of my best friends came to see her in either service then made their way to support Rich and the fire department at the pancake breakfast. I went to the breakfast after the 2nd service with Morgan, my parents, sister and friend then Rich took us all on a ride in the fire engine. (Blake was hanging out with Rich's parents. He left with them after the 1st performance.) The fire engine ride was the favorite for my sister and friend being their first time (at ages 30 and 28) going for a ride in a fire engine ;-)

Doesn't she look tired...not sure she even mustered up a smile during any of it :-/

But she sure could smile after getting some pancakes in her belly and going on a fire engine ride!

My friend was all smiles too! She said she would have paid more if she knew she was going to ride a fire truck. (Rich even had her honk the air horn!)

After Rich got home from cleaning up after the breakfast, we went to Rich's parents' to have an early Easter with them. (Rich's mom will be gone on a horse riding trip next Sunday.) We had some yummy pizza, the kiddos got some fun little gifts and we brought home their little chicks.

The kids' chicks. Morgan's are the yellow ones and Blake's are the black ones. They're nice and toasty under the heat lamp in our basement for now. :-)

**That was our weekend and the busyness is still going! Morgan had her kindergarten round-up last night (Monday). It was really neat actually! We started by signing ALL the paperwork. While Rich and I did that the kids got to play on brand new iPads! Then we had to have the paperwork checked over and Morgan got a t-shirt with the school's logo and a bag full of goodies (a picture book and fun worksheets.) We then made our way to the cafeteria for hot dogs, chips, watermelon and cookies! Then to the gym to stack cups and do coloring pages. The last stop was the kindergarten classroom where the kids got to make caterpillars and meet the teachers. Fun! Fun! I then did all the paperwork for Blake to go to preschool after dropping Morgan off at school this morning and Morgan still needs to go through testing in a couple weeks for Kindergarten! *Phew!* I have a feeling it's just going to get busier as they'll both be in school next year :-/

The caterpillars.

Fun Links!

I came across these links this past week and liked them SO MUCH that I just had to share them!

Spring Crafts, Fun & Activities for Families eBook: This is a FREE eBook and has SO MANY fun crafts to do with kiddos this Spring! I've looked through it several times already dreaming about the fun the kiddos and I could have...and we've already made one of them! :-)

We Give Books: I actually just discovered this site this morning after reading today's post on Give Every Day. This site allows you to read books to your children online for FREE. The books you, or your child, like can be added to your 'library' and read over and over again. The coolest part is that for each book you read to your child, a book is given to a charitable campaign of your choice! I have already signed up and within 20 minutes Blake and I were able to read AND give 5 books to the NEA Foundation's Teaching Excellence Award winners' schools....we're going to start reading to give to the Jumpstart for Young Children program next! :-)

Giveaway at Tiger Tales Blog!

There is currently a giveaway going on at Tiger Tales' blog for the book Roly-Poly Egg. I was asked if I would spread the word and it's such a cute book (like most Tiger Tale books are) that I thought my bloggy friends would be interested :-) If you would like to enter you can leave a comment either on this blog post or on their facebook page.

*I was not compensated for this post in any way. Just spreading the word for a giveaway of a cute book! :-)

'D' is for Dog

I think learning about the letter 'D' is the most fun we've had so far...check out what we Did! :-)

The kiddos' Dog word wheels. The words on the wheels this time were: Dog, Doctor, Dragon and Dish. (We Didn't Do anything with Dragon and Dish, since I couldn't come up with anything, so we used the word Duck instead!)

We played Dog games.

Cuddled with Dogs During reading time.

Read about some Dogs.

Made Dog puppets while singing about a special farmer's Dog named "Bingo" ;-).

Moving on to Ducks! We read about some fun Ducks!

Then played a Duck game.

And with the word Doctor, we played a popular Doctoring game.

Then we played Dress-up as Doctors!

Morgan Doctoring Blake.

Blake as the Doctor.

Blake Doctoring Morgan.

And in the Bible we learned about Daniel. Morgan also had her church program practice that night, which is called "That's So Daniel!"

Part of the reason we had so much fun with the letter 'D' was all the games we played, but my favorite part was how creative the kiddos got while playing Doctor Dress-Up! While I was being Doctored, I Discovered that Micky Mouse is in my eyes. Not only is he in there, but he had made himself at home by getting all cozy under a blanket! I may have never known my eyes were home to a special Disney mouse if Morgan hadn't been my Doctor that Day. ;-)

Wordless Wednesday: Random Pics

These are some random pictures that didn't seem to be enough to be into a post by themselves, so I thought I'd share them for a Wordless Wednesday! :-)

Morgan and Blake's first snowman!!

A Red-headed Woodpecker on the pinecone bird feeder Morgan made in preschool. The sky yesterday morning as the rain/yucky stuff was coming. Neat to be able to find beauty in it! :-) The 2-blade helicoptor (Chinook) that practice lands in the tiny airport down the road. Awesome watching them-especially when it's snowy and the snow flies up all around it (like sand in the dessert areas.) It's LOUD too and shakes our house so much it sounds like the old windows are going to fall out-LOL!

Okay, so it wasn't wordless-LOL! Happy WW!! :-)