Easter Sunday

Happy Easter everyone!! I hope you all had a wonderful day! Ours got off to a bit of a rocky start, but got lots better as the day went on. Poor Sam woke up in the middle of the night with a belly ache and threw up twice. Ugh. Poor guy! He did fall back to sleep though and felt a lot better in the morning thank goodness. Joshua was up bright and early and dashed in our room to ask if he could begin "the hunt". Since we hadn't gotten much sleep the night before we begged him for a few extra minutes of rest. He crawled into bed with us and russled about until we decided it just wasn't worth it to try to sleep any longer. Especially after Joshua - CONVINCED that Gabe had left his room - went out to find him, only to burst into his room and discover he hadn't gone anywhere afterall and was still sleeping....well WAS still sleeping until the bursting into the room incident. Ah, well....church begins at nine so we DID need to start getting things going. Last night Gabe and I discussed the Easter Bunny and where he thought the furry guy would hide his basket. We thought maybe by the piano, so that is the first place that Gabe went and GUESS WHAT?! There his basket was! He was the first to find his, followed closely by Will who found his on the fireplace. Josh and Sam had high hopes that their baskets would be hidden in very hard to find places so it took them quite awhile to find theirs. Joshua finally found his in the guest bathroom bathtub/shower and Sam (with a little prompting, and help from Gabe and Josh who happened to have discovered it earlier) found his inside the t.v. armoire. Joshua loved his Pokemon board game and his treats, Sam loved his little Ben10 guy and spiderman playdough mold, Gabe loved his new octopus playdough set (I think mom was more excited about this than anyone else...it looks like SO much fun! - I'm really not being sarcastic, it looks DARLING and I am REALLY excited to play with it...with the boys, of course..) :) And Will loved his little monkey rattle and bunny rattle. Mom and Dad enjoyed a few new shirts and lots of treats. It was so fun to wake up to a house full of surprises this morning!

We quickly made some toaster waffles for breakfast and hurried to get ready for church. The boys looked so handsome, Joshua in his Navy blue suit, Sam in his spring sweater (Joshua's from a few years ago), Gabe in his spring sweater and blue/yellow checkered shirt(Sam's from a few years ago) and Will in his blue/yellow checkered shirt (Gabe's from a few years ago). About 2 seconds from returning home the boys had already changed into play clothes much to my dismay. I wanted to get a picture first. Grr. oh well, we still have a lot of spring left, thank goodness. I'm sure I'll have another chance. Church was wonderful. Josh and Sam were really excited to sing their easter songs to us. Sam mentioned to me twice that he "knew ALL the words to the song" and was going to show me and wanted to make sure that I was paying VERY close attention. They sang "I feel my Savior's love" and "Did Jesus really live again" As soon as they started singing I started to tear up. I'm a TOTAL sap when it comes to children singing, ESPECIALLY when those children belong to me. What brought the tears the most was watching little Sam with his eyes FIXED on me, making sure I was watching him sing every word. I didn't dare take my eyes away from his, and only had a chance to glance at Joshua once or twice which worked out fine since Joshua wasn't worried about me at all and was just excited to be part of the scene. All I could think about was how lucky I was to have a little boy up there that cared more about singing to me at that moment than anything else and how I needed to cherish every second of it because that little boy is going to grow up SO FAST! I absolutely LOVE this time in our lives with these amazing little boys. They really seem to be at the perfect ages right now and sometimes I wish I could just freeze time altogether for awhile.

We had a wonderful Easter program, with beautiful testimonies of Christ, and the boys were SO good. It couldn't have been better. We're starting to cut the amount of "things" we're bringing to the meetings little by little each week. We're down to zero snacks, a Friend magazine, a few small books for Gabe and a bottle for Will. It's working out great, we're finding out that less is DEFINITELY more as everyone seems to be getting a little more out of the lessons/talks.

We came home and hurried to grab a light lunch and put the littles to bed so we could begin preparing our Easter dinner. We had the Birschbach's over along with Brandon's girlfriend Vanessa and her two sisters. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner of Ham, cheesy potatoes, two salads, two jello salads, rolls and cake. We played a game called "Boxers or Brief's" which was fun, except that I lost terribly. We had a great time playing and chatting. It was fun to have everyone here. Shar and I missed our mom who was working in Phoenix today, but we have high hopes of being with her next year if things work out like they should. All in all, it was a great day. Tomorrow is supposed to be SIXTY THREE degrees which I am absolutely PSYCHED about. I'm hoping it will be enough to get me through the days at the end of the week that have a "chance of snow" ERGH. I am SO TIRED OF stinking SNOW! Tomorrow is the last day of the boys' spring break so we are lucky that it is going to be so warm! We hope you all had a WONDERFUL Easter Sunday!!!