And then...

A little over a week ago, life got a little crazy. It seemed there was one thing right after another. On Saturday, we went to a brunch at church where Clara got to make an edible necklace. She thought that was awesome. I can't blame her. Having a snack around my neck to munch on wouldn't be so bad.And then... Just before we went to bed. My fried brain remembered we hadn't dyed eggs. So we did that really fast.

And then... The Easter Bunny came on Sunday. He even brought me a basket for the first time since I've been married. And he must love me, biggest Easter basket I've ever seen.

Looks like you ate too much candy and your teeth have rotted out, little deary.

Clara was totally stoked every time she found an egg. She had a hay day.

With each holiday I run into the dilemma of where to draw the line so the real meaning isn't lost or forgotten amidst the other stuff. I came to a conclusion this year. In my opinion, it's okay to have fun and celebrate holidays as long as my kids know why we have the holiday. My Levi cousins are amazing examples at doing this, check out Jana's blog. They have good ideas of how to keep the meaning of the holiday front and center during the celebrations. This year, I made sure Clara knew we have Easter because of Jesus and not because of the Easter Bunny.

And then... We went to church. I've been singing in the choir and I was a little bitter that we had to have practice on Easter Sunday. But it went quickly so I got over it. Plus despite having only FIVE women that sang in church, I think we did pretty good. Clara got about a 30 minute nap and sometimes I think no nap is better than waking her up after only 30 minutes. She was ornery. But she looked cute.

And then... We spend time with family at my mom's. The kids had another Easter egg hunt and the adults enjoyed every single second of the perfectly gorgeous weather on my dad's perfectly manicured lawn. I think my parent's front lawn is my favorite place to be when the weather is nice. I'm so glad we got a few more weekends of outside weather before the heat comes. Thank you, weather.

And then... Between working at my client, last minute tax preparation and filings, Monday and Tuesday were a blur.

And then... Clara got her first bubble bath, thank you Easter bunny. If you were Clara's mom, she probably would have got bubble bath long before now.

And then... Jason got hives all over his body. You might be glad he doesn't want me to post the pictures. It looked pretty gross.

And then... The 15th came and although I had to file some extensions, it seemed like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and flew away. Yeah, it will fly back in a year. But for now, it's gone.

And then... Emily, Alexis and Justin came. We went to Sonic and then Lily's softball game. I'm sure we looked silly huddling under the blanket in jackets, wondering how long it'd be before our noses froze off. But it was cold, I promise.

And then... We went and played at the River on Thursday. Bubbles (my new favorite thing to take pictures of), tunnels, mud, water and dead snakes.

Clara was a filthy mess and an emotional wreck. Both, however, bothered me little. She was filthy because she was having fun and she was emotional because she got to have a sleepover at Grandma's so I could go into work early and just stay a half day.

On our little walk, she was so mad and wanted no one to touch her but Justin. Luckily, he's pretty strong and carried her back to where we started.

Clara wanted to hike up the mountain so bad. She kept saying "climb mountain". I couldn't climb it with her so I told her she could do it. She would start climbing then say, "helping mom" ... meaning, help me mom.

The mud kept all the kids entertained, 2 years to 13.

And then... We went to James' baseball game and Steven's softball game. James did a really good job at fielding and Steven found his swing in his second game, ending with three triples.

And then... We went to a late breakfast on Friday. Well, those of us who found a way to skip out of work, anyway.

And then... I rolled up Clint's hand in the window. I feel bad. Sorry Clint. He was in my car, the windows were down and I got on the freeway. Every time I get on the freeway, I instantly roll both front windows up. He yelled, "Oh! Oh!" and in the split-second it took my brain to realize what had happened, I thought he was exclaiming because he wanted the window rolled down. Before I realized anything else, he yelled "Hand!" and I released his poor hand from my window's death grip.

And then... The little girls had so much fun playing in Aunt Angela's bed. She didn't even care when they got on her white bed spread with their shoes on. How nice.

And then... The adults got to go to dinner. We had quite the adventure trying to find a nice place to go. We had 12 people and didn't want to wait 2 hours, but most of the nicer places won't take reservations. We ended up going to Papaya Thai, a little Thai restaurant in a strip mall. It was a little sketchy looking, but it ended up being really good.

Clara and I had a little plasma car race before we left.

Nothing beats this.

I love my family. I didn't take a picture of all of us with James and Lily because well, I'm kind of a perfectionist. If all nine of us aren't present, my motivation to take a picture decreases drastically. I know it's a bad attitude, but at least I recognize my weakness. We sure missed Rachel, but I've declared that we will all be together next summer. Got that family? No one has any excuses to miss our 2010 reunion. It's been too long. Despite missing the wee ones and Rachel, I love this picture... I love my siblings and I'm glad we got to spend some time together. I'm also glad Daniel smiled in this picture. He never smiles in pictures, but lookey here, smiling away. And we have teeth sitings on all three boys. Good picture signifying a great evening.