Court of Honor, Easter Activities, and Lemonade! 3/25 - 3/31/2018

The girls can be so fun sometimes, playing make believe and doing things together.  They really do have a special connection with each other. 

 Chris and the girls play with the magna-tiles frequently.  Usually they share pretty well.  Sometimes we have to divide everything up evenly, even by color. :)

Monday was crazy busy, I left the house at 9:45 and didn't really get home until 7:30.  I did a bunch of errands and then rushed home to go visiting teaching, and then ran to the church to help set up for dress rehearsal, then pick up the kids from school and a quick trip to the store for something I needed for dinner and then back to the church for dress rehearsal. (All while putting in the next load of laundry between each activity).  Grateful for Damon's and Doug's help keeping things going when I'm not home.  

 This was Doug's first Court of Honor as the new Scout Master.  He did a great job.  Damon was master of ceremonies and he did a great job too.  Damon earned quite a few merit badges this time since he finally finished the three he had been working on for months.  He received: personal fitness, family life, personal management, digital technology, programming, and mining in society.  The last three he did at a merit badge clinic.  He is getting close to earning his Star, he just needs a few more service hours.

 Soccer and piano keeps us busy on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I don't like driving Tyler to piano at 4:30, there are a lot of cars on the road with crazy drivers.  But it's still worth it, he is getting better and learning lots.  This week it was raining really hard and the roads were flooding a bit. I was white knuckle on the steering wheel the whole time and was really grateful when we made it home safe.

I did a big trip to Kroger because they had some canned items on sale. They have to put in each can separately so my receipt was crazy long!

Thursday was our RS activity.  Instead of doing a dinner for the birthday celebration we did some service projects.  I helped sew a weighted blanket and I brought a very yummy white chocolate raspberry cheesecake.  I was kind of bummed that I only got a small taste at home, they went pretty fast at church.

 Friday was Good Friday so the kids had the day off of school. In the morning someone came and picked up our old piano - Doug also had the day off so he was able to help wheel it onto the trailer.  The person buying it ended up just living down the street so that was nice that they didn't have to move it very far.

It was the perfect weather and we went to the beach with some friends in the morning.  I packed a lunch and so we stayed until 2 or 3:00.  Tyler took off his shirt part way in and I forgot to put sunscreen on his back, so he got sunburned pretty bad.  The kids love this beach and I love how close it is.  Cleaning up sand is a bit of a pain, but I'm grateful for washing machines.

 After the beach and dinner I went over to the church to help with The Barefoot Theater Company's production of Lemonade.  We did a quick run through and then the show started at 7:00.  There was a good audience, they even had to set up more chairs.  Natalie and I had gone over earlier in the morning to set up the backdrop and Damon and Tyler had set up the chairs.

The show was great, the kids did the best they had ever done and were loud enough most of the time.  I had hinted to a mom to get flowers for Natalie and she surprised me with flowers too.  They were a huge bouquet.  We quickly took down everything and left the building at 8:05 (we started at 7:10 - so to do the show and clean up in under an hour was phenomenal).  Then Natalie, Haley, Laisa, and I went out for ice cream to celebrate Haley's birthday.  I got my favorite at Cold Stone: oreos and raspberries in sweet cream ice cream.  Mmmmm, so good.

Notice the red curtain backdrop, I ironed and sewed all of those - that took awhile. :)

Saturday we had time to do our normal cleaning before conference started.  The kids do a great job of watching even on Saturday.  We dyed eggs during the morning session and then had our egg hunt after lunch.

 Everyone loves dad!

 I really tried to stay away from candy this year.  I only bought one bag of jelly beans and then used some lifesavers and laffy taffy's that I had in the cupboard. We didn't take them to any other egg hunts either - oh well, Easter isn't about the candy right?  They get more excited about the legos and money anyway.  The boys all got a small set and the girls got some Shopkins and $1.00 each.

Doug and Damon went out with friends for dinner then watched the priesthood session at a friend's house.  The new announcement about the merging of quorums was exciting.