Holy Week

IT IS HOLY TIME!

A week easily turning into my favorite time of year.

Happy my kids are loving Holy week just as much as I am.

They excitingly ask if we are doing xyz again. 

They are remembering and storing the stories in their brains and that makes me giddy!

I saw this painting online last year and fell in love with it!

The bright colors make it feel so alive and I can only imagine the joy

those people felt as they personally greeted Jesus into Jerusalem.

My mind always tries to visualize what it must have been like to be there in that moment. 
They did not have phones or the news to say exactly what time he would be arriving.

Did they camp out over night? Were they traveling alongside with him?

 Was it just circumstance they happened to be there when that moment happened?

Who knows. All I know is that they were excited for his coming. 

Do I greet the Savior each day as excitingly as those who waived the palm fronds?
Do I shout Hosanna and express through words my love of Him?
Always things I can work on to be better.

I am grateful this week helps me refocus and try to be better on my relationship
 with my Savior and give it top priority!

 

And if you think it is always rainbow and butterflies...

After conference we headed to Grammy's for her Easter party. 
Can you tell the weather was warming up?

Shirts and skins.

Rusty must have been on his own team?

It's always a fight for the baby!
Snagged sweet Junie for a bit!

I think finding the egg with candy and scripture verses helps

with the excitement. 

Unfortunately, it did not work out to have our
big Passover meal where we invite people over. 
It was a MAJOR bummer and the kids were NOT happy about that.

(Talk about bound to traditions!)

Instead I simply put the decorations on the table and we ate our normal meal 

in 3 different increments that night. 

These 2 were round 1.

We did read our LET MY PEOPLE GO story, and had Moses and Pharaoh 

teach us about the plagues, Passover, and how we had the Last Supper. 

As we were grabbing Taco Bell to take with us to the Easter Pageant 

we saw a familiar car behind us!

Hi Madeline!!

We went with just the girls.

The boys went for mutual and already had better plans with friends.

We are finding that this is our new normal on the weekends.

I didn't have it in me to go down early and save good seats.

We showed up 30 minutes before it started and grabbed a horrible lawn spot where

you couldn't see anything.

Lindi wasn't very happy about this.

I warned them beforehand this is what probably would happen.
Didn't help her mood, but she slowly came around and we had a great time mostly

listening to the music. 

We could see the angles pretty good!

Rusty had been attending a family history class for the youth.

On the last day he came home with "some papers from Sis Whitehead".

He stood against the wall and like rolling a bowling bowl he released a roll

of genealogy across the floor until it hit the other side of the wall. 

Casey and I jaws dropped to the floor!!

This must have taken her days to do!

(It did. Come to find out a whole week).

Family history is her jam.

She LOVES it!

She claimed the work was there and done and easy.

 But there was one tiny hole with missing information.

So Rusty gets to finish that!

This page gets me.

What a blessing family is.

No matter how distantly related.

We are closer than we think.

Time to do our part!

I added something new this year.

My friend posted this on her instagram and I thought they were adorable!

I whipped up some salt dough and these kids created some pretty amazing Garden Tombs.

Most of my family was out of town so we planned to have Easter dinner

with the Evans'.

I made this carrot cake for dessert.

The Easter Bunny came. 

 

April Amazingness

We can always count on baseball to keep us busy and
 entertained during the month of April!

Rusty ended his year on his Wolfpack club team.

It was bittersweet.

He LOVED his friends and coach Ben and Landon.

For being a club team they really accommodated our no playing on Sunday

wishes and gave him ample play time.
Unheard of for most club teams. 

I loved watching him play, but grateful to not have to juggle the 

weekly double headers that hit at the worst times.

The girls were troopers to put themselves to bed too many times to count

while I watched and Lane and Casey tackled other games, practices, mutual or meetings. 

They ended their last tournament in 2nd place!!

Lane has been loving being on Varsity.

They had a late away game so I offered to bring the team dinner to eat before they
hopped on the bus to Phoenix. 

This is what it looks like to feed 40 teenage boys and coaches!

I text Lane saying to bring at LEAST 3 boys to help him bring in the food.

He came out with 2.

When the back door lifted to reveal the goods they all said in unison, woahhhh.

Luckily there was a nice man driving a golf cart watching them trying to finagle a way

to get it all back to the locker room and offered them a ride!

This was a game vs Red Mnt.

They sure have a spectacular view of the Superstition Mountains!

Oh my lanta.
Could she be any more on trend?

I actually cringe that at 6 she knows what the cool items are to sport.
Bring back Rainbow Brite, Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake, STAT!!

When your cousin is the PE teacher at your kids elementary school, you 

get fun pictures throughout the day of your kids and their besties.

My dad had us over to his office conference
 room to binge on the soda machine and popcorn.
Maybe I should think about a career at Senergy Petroleum!

We added pizza and dancing to the sweet sound system and had a nice little family raver, lol!

My great aunt Polly Perkinson passed away.
She was a fancy lady,  in my mind.
And so very kind. 
She made you feel like a million bucks and the most important person in the world.
She passed that trait on to her daughters.
Amy, Julie, Jeanette and Lisa.
I see them around town often and are ALWAYS greeted with the biggest, tightest hug.

I always loved going to her house for Christmas parties and have fond memories
of playing with my second cousins there.

She ALWAYS had a cheeseball on the table spread and we left with a bag
of fancy nuts as a gift. 

Her funeral was lovely and each story had me smiling. 

One of my second cousins, Amber, who I haven't seen in over 10 years.

My parents have birthdays days apart from each other.

Love that they invited us children to lunch to celebrate:)

Our neighbor needed help installing his new light for the pickleball court.
I was sure holding my breath on this strategy!

"Fixed the new post!"

My friend sent me this picture she found on her camera roll.

AWWWE, baby Della!!!!

Can I have her back like this for just one day??

Love scamming the scammers!

We had another Cone and Go at bishops house!

It was a hit!

I went to grab more cones out of the massive box to find it empty!
We didn't go through all the cones the first time we did it.
We tried raspberry with vanilla and I think it was a hit.

The weather was top notch and everyone enjoyed visiting and playing 4 square in the street.

We didn't walk inside until 10 o'clock!

The next day I got texts saying how much their families looks forward to cone night.

I love when you have an idea and aren't sure if it will work out or be a bust.

Thankful for promptings and guidance on even the simplest
things that make an impact on others.
 

Crazy that Lane has friends receiving mission calls.

On this particular night, 3 opened theirs.

Jesse lives on my parents street so it was fun for my parents to see him

hanging out with kids in their neighborhood.

My mom sent me this picture. 

 

Lindi is TEN!

She kind of scores big time that her birthday falls
 in line with Spring Break each year!

A whole week of fun and then she got to celebrate her actual birthday on Sunday.

Normally she doesn't have specific requests as far as presents go.

However, this year she was pretty particular on what she wanted.

Could she BE any more pre-teen?

Lululemon shorts and a Stanley.

The sheltered bubble is starting to burst. Dang it. 

Her friends from the neighborhood were sweet to bring her some presents.

It made her day!