April Catch-up

Well, I'm doing a "catch-up" post as I have been so busy recently that I haven't had much time to blog or take pictures for that matter.

When we got back from St. Louis, some neighbors of ours invited us to spend the day with them in Chicago.  We went to the Musuem of Science and Industry first.  After that we went to the American Girl Store and ate at the Water Tower Place Mall. 

I really didn't take many pictures that day - a couple at the musuem and a couple at the mall

Paige having strawberry crepes for dessert at Water Tower
Place-Food for Life

Ashley at Candy World with dresses made of candy wrappers

After Spring Break, soccer started up in earnest for both Paige and Ashley so we have busy with practices almost every night of the week along with games.  Fortunately, Ashley plays during the week and Paige on Saturday, so we don't have to worry about conflicts.

The first week of April was General Conference and we had our good friends over with us again on Sunday.  Afterward, we had a few more friends come over and had a barbecue hot dog/sausage buffet.  We had a bunch of different kinds of hot dog and sausages - beef jalapeno, brats, chicken apple, chicken artichoke, etc., etc. along with all kinds of toppings.  It was fun.

Conference was wonderful, although I know that mostly from having read the talks online after.  For some reason, I was unusually sleepy on Saturday and I also thought it would be fun to put together a basket of quiet listening activities and treats for the girls, but honestly it just ended up being more of a distraction.  My girls are old enough to just sit and listen.  I should have just stuck with the puzzle.  We did do a puzzle, but we didn't even put it up until Sunday. 

Our conference puzzle - the State of Illinois

The following weekend was Easter and began on Saturday morning with a Primary Easter Egg Hunt and service project.  I took Paige, it was a really fun activity.  After that, the girls colored Easter eggs and I made a bunch of cookies to take to a ward baptism.  Two of Paige's friends from Primary were baptized that day.  It was a great service and we were so happy for our friends and their families.  Later that evening we joined the families for a celebration dinner and get-together.  After the dinner, I ran Paige over to another friend's house for a flashlight Easter egg hunt--that was pretty fun too!

Paige working on the Primary service project

hunting for Easter Eggs

getting ready for the flashlight egg hunt

On Easter Sunday, we enjoyed all of our traditions, including Easter baskets in the morning.  Paige was very excited to get a giant chocolate Easter Bunny.  She also got a bird book, so she and her dad can identify all the birds that come to her bird feeder.  Ashley got the game Farkle, which should make for some fun gametime.  Both Dave and I had to teach lessons at church and in the hustle and bustle of getting to church on time, I forgot to put the ham in the oven.  Fortunately, we still had time to cook the ham after and just ate a little later than planned.  It was nice to go to church and just forget about everything else and focus on recognizing the significance of Easter. 

I'm kicking myself for not taking more pictures on this day.  Both the girls had new Easter dresses but I completely forgot to take a picture.  This is Paige in her dress, it's just not on Easter morning.

Easter bags

After Easter, I feel like things really picked-up steam on the calendar, especially in the church activities category.  First off, the YW Laurels hosted a Teacher Appreciation Dinner for their favorite teachers.  It was a small event, but still required preparing food, serving a meal, and planning a program.  I was the only adult available that night so I had my hands full and was a little stressy trying to get everything ready but in the end it went really well and a was a good success.  I'm hoping we can do it again next year.

Unfortunately and unexpectedly, we attended a memorial service on the weekend.  A friend who was pregnant, lost her baby.  We are not exactly sure what happened but the mother was far enough along that she did have to deliver the baby after the baby's heart had stopped beating. This was the very same family that had just baptized one of their sons the week before.  They are such good and amazing people and we know what a difficult experience and sad loss it was for them, but I know their strong faith is a great comfort to them.  I visit teach the mother and the father actually home teaches us, so we wanted to do everything we could to help and support them.  They held a graveside and memorial service for their daughter on Saturday and I organized refreshments for after the service and Dave actually spoke about the Plan of Salvation at the Memorial service.

The next day at church, Paige gave a GREAT talk.  I helped her with some ideas but she wrote it herself.  It was about following the example of Jesus.  Unfortunately, I was teaching somewhere else at the same time she was speaking, so I didn't get to see it, but Dave assures me she was awesome!  Later that evening, we headed back to church for a tribute night to the high school seniors in our ward who are graduating.  It is called Pearls of Wisdom and is a really fun program that acknowledges the seniors and gives them a chance to give advice and share their "pearls of wisdom" with the rest of the youth.  It's always really interesting to hear what they say and gives you a great insight into what their families are like, who they are and who they will become.

The following Tuesday, I presented at a Relief Society meeting about different cultures.  Of course, I talked about Thailand and made some sticky rice and mango for everyone to eat.  Just pulling out souvenirs from out trip and looking through the pictures, made me miss Thailand!  It was a fun evening, there were 4 other presenters and it sure made me want to travel around the world more!

The next night, was our youth temple trip.  The kids did over 300 baptisms.  We didn't get home until after 10:30, but we don't get to go often and it really is a blessing to do temple work alongside the youth in our ward.

This past weekend, we had some friends over for a game night.  We are learning to play lots of new games with them so it has been fun.  We taught them Spot It and Rook.  They taught us Settlers of Catan and Nertzs.  We have also played the train game and Farkle.  The girls are always mad when we make them stop playing to go to bed!

On Saturday morning, we got up early.  Dave took Ashley to her engineering workshop and Paige and I went over to the school for a Healthy Families Day and did a 1 mile Fun Run.  I'm happy to report we survived the mile run!  Right after the run, we jumped in the car and raced over to Paige's soccer game.  I told her the run was just a warm up for her game.  I guess it worked because she scored a goal!  First goal of the season for the whole team.

after our run, not a flattering picture

After the game, we went back to the school for the "fair" part of healthy families day.  We walked around and got lots of free handouts and goodies from the vendors.  Paige loves the pedometer that Walgreens was handing out.  We also entered some drawings and Paige won two times!  She won one month of karate lessons as well as admissions to a bouncehouse and free smoothies.  She's pretty excited about her good luck. 

A little later in the evening, Ashley went to a youth activity and the rest of us went with another family in the neighborhood to see the movie Chimpanzee in honor of Earth Day.  It was a good movie, worth seeing.  Although I made Dave come with us and in his words he, "missed watching a White Sox pitcher throw a perfect game because he was at a nature movie."

Afterwards, Paige was disappointed that we said that was enough fun for one day.  We all came home and got to work getting ready for Sunday.  Dave had a lesson to prepare and I had to speak in Sacrament meeing so we had some work to do.

Somewhere in all of this is Paige and I going on a Brownies field trip together, me volunteering at the elementary school, Ashley's school soccer games and engineering meetings, Paige's numerous playdates and social activities, and Dave work, work, working.  As you can see, we are well-stimulated or overloaded, depending on how we are feeling on a certain day!

Paige and her family tree poster hanging at her school