Easter

Eddie went TDY right before Easter, so I  didn't do much for Easter. It's getting pretty sad with how little I actually do at Easter time... I really need to be better about that since it's kinda a big deal. 

The spiritual aspect, not the commercial. :-D

So Saturday morning, I whipped together a few candy-filled eggs and gave them to the kids. Their gifts hadn't come yet (Thank you, shipping to Hawaii!) which were books for Sacrament mtg. to help them focus more on being reverent. (And it hasn't worked yet...) 

Then we picked up Daddy at the airport and went to a little get together at a friend's house, so I made some bunny shaped rolls to take.

My little Easter present to myself was a "Scrap Trap"... a little garbage catcher that  you put on the drawers in the kitchen to catch crumbs and drippy messes so you don't have to take them all across the kitchen. We are good friends, me and the scrap trap :-)

 Grandma Leavitt sent some Easter clothes for my kids. 

Here's Hunter in his getup:

 And the girls in their new dresses:

 My adorable kids!

After church, we relaxed and did a small picnic with some friends where the kids did an Easter egg hunt with some of their friends from church. We were going to teach them the Easter story with the eggs, but ran out of time, so we ended up doing that for FHE on Monday. This is the first year that I actually got it all together in time and found what I was looking for! (Thanks to Pinterest!)

Another Facebook Rant

I'm tempted one day to put a status on Facebook to make fun of statuses that annoy me...

Example A:
The "I want everyone to ask me for details, so I'm not going to give them until like 10 people inquire" status
 i.e. "I'm so frustrated right now",
 ":-(", or
"I just got the best news ever!!!"

I think I should post something like "I have never been so angry in my life!" and wait for 2 days...because these attention seekers always leave you hanging... and add my comment at the end of everyone's concerned comments : "I couldn't find my nail polish remover"

So anti-climatic :-)

Example B:
The "I never post these but if I don't, my children's children will be haunted because obviously updating your status that you have met someone that has been affected with teenage acne will bring about a universal cure and not sharing, well, you're just heartless! " status

Really? Really??


I think I should post something like " I support the act of wearing clean underwear and if you re-post this, you will be telling everyone that you lack the creativity that it takes to think up your own status, but your self esteem makes you believe that posting many statuses makes you cool or something, and so you don't even care how lame it is or how annoying you appear to be to everyone. Re-post if you're a lemming"

Example C:
The "I never bothered to learn to spell because I live in a world of auto correct--and Facebook doesn't auto correct" status
i.e. my babie gurl is SOOOO Cuet!

Yeah.... If your typing so fast that you don't have time to proofread what you wrote before posting ON A REGULAR BASIS, then you need to cut back something in your schedule. Maybe some of your Facebook time, for example?? (This does not apply to the person who occasionally makes a typo... those happen sometimes)

I think I could post " I lernd how to splel B4 U wer even boarn!"


I'm sure I could think of more, but then I was thinking... I might really offend some people if I did a mocking status. They might just delete me as their friend. Would it be worth it?

AND then I think...wait, if they delete me, then I don't have to read their annoying statuses anymore, thus freeing up my news feed for posts I actually care about... and it was THEIR choice! I'm not the jerk that deleted THEM! I'm really not seeing a downside to this...

Ok...I really need to go to bed... ;-)

Carissa's Day of Birthday Fun

Well, Carissa has made it to the grand old age of 3. 

She likes to scare us now and again and fall off things, which makes this quite an achievement, really. 

She has many things she loves and so this birthday, we decided to tap into some of those things.

First, she loves Phineas and Ferb. I put it on one night when I was trying to keep the kids busy while I tried to dig a piece of glass out of my foot and daddy was gone on business, and we ended up watching like 4 episodes and going to bed late that night, but that just started it all. What a fun show :-) 

So I like to make cakes with things they like, so:

Behold! Perry the Platypus!

As soon as I finished this, I had to go to bed with a killer migraine, so I woke up early the next morning and cleaned up the house and wrapped her presents and laid them out.

This was Carissa coming and seeing her birthday spoils for the first time:

Another favorite: She loves Cars 2. Would you know that William Sonoma not only makes Star Wars pancake molds, but Cars 2 molds as well? Oh yea!

Mater Pancake + Strawberries on top = Heaven!

 And yet another Favorite: Barbie dolls and Princesses. This is a ballerina Barbie from Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt. She opened it first and was content to just play with it and forget the rest; she was that much in love with it.

 And then she got our present: Disney Princess Barbies. There are 7 of them there, people! She was happy with them too, but she still goes for that ballerina first when she pulls out the dolls. It must have the essence of grandparents to it to make it all that much cooler. She really loves them and gets excited whenever we call or video chat with them. :-)

We gave her a couple hours to play with her new toys (She also got a microphone that I have mixed feelings about... Do my children really need to be any louder??) and she watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb. (And Daddy got a few winks of sleep)

Then we went out to a burger place here called Teddy's Bigger Burgers, because she said she wanted a burger. (Yeah, I'll stick with my Fuddruckers, thank you.) 

She got chicken nuggets. 

:-)

Afterwards, we went to get frozen yogurt at one of the many frozen yogurt bars here (where she got strawberry, naturally [another favorite]), then headed back home for Daddy to go back to sleep and we were going to go to the pool...but Carissa and Hunter both fell asleep. So Lexi, Hunter and I hung out and waited for Carissa to wake up, and then headed out to the pool for a quick swim. Then we came back home and whipped up some Chicken Alfredo, woke up Daddy and had our Perry cake :-)

What a long, but fun day! 

Happy Birthday Carissa!

We got sick...

So a good portion of the month was spent with everyone taking turns fighting off some crud. First Lexi, then everyone else inevitably caught it since she coughed on EVERYONE! :-)

As I was half-consciously doing a load of overdue laundry, I thought to myself: This is probably one of those scenarios where it's the hardest being a parent, physically. I have my spouse, who is just as sick as me and working a night shift, so he's sleeping all day and then some. I have a baby who was sick, but not as bad, who wants to be held all day, but in a standing position, unless he's sleeping. He also wakes up frequently at nights so, so do I. I have a little 3 year old who isn't sleeping well from her sickness, which makes her cranky and tired all day as well. And a 4 year old who is on the mend and wants to do stuff, but her parents are so exhausted, they can't even see straight. So she trashes the house and picks on her sister, out of sheer boredom. And lots of movies... too many movies...

All the while, I ache. I nod off at random moments. Got the whole sore throat and runny nose then congestion thing going on. (And I learned that Dimetapp makes me go CRAZY... no sleep that night! Holy Moly!)

But since I have yet to find a maid that works for my budget, you know...for free, I had to drag myself off the couch and take care of the dirty dishes and clothes, feed the hungry kids, bathe them, get them to bed, and want to die at the end of the day. There was a good week and a half that I didn't make it to the grocery store, which meant that any item on my menu during that time that required fresh meat, produce (we have to buy our produce no more than 2 days in advance or else it's no good), or anything else that I had intended to get on my next trip, had to be replaced with something we had on hand in our food storage. So we had soups, pastas, pancakes... and take out a couple nights :-(

I do have canned peaches, so that got to be my choice for Pi day this year, since it was right during my sickness:

And Lexi helped make the crust, which kept her busy for all of 10 minutes.

As soon as we were all feeling better, we got out of the house and kissed that DVD player goodbye for a couple days. I was so happy to go to the  grocery store. Isn't that just sad?