Easter Blessings

With the ages of the majority of my children in double digits, the Easter festivities have mellowed considerably. We have been able to focus more on the real meaning of the holiday which has been fantastic. We still color eggs and do the egg hunt for Malia, but now I actually have kids that will eat the deviled eggs and egg salad that come afterward. In past years, Kevin and I ate as many hard-cooked eggs as we could before we tossed the last few just so that the kids could color them.

At eleven, this was Matthew’s last year to hunt eggs. Mentally, I think Matthew is done with the whole Easter egg hunt thing. However, he definitely still likes to have a basketful of sugar, so I suspect he persevered for the sake of the candy. He does still enjoy the fine art of dying eggs so he happily participated in that. Malia was as gung ho as ever about the whole thing and the big boys enjoy the copious amounts of jelly beans.

I always like when General Conference and Easter fall on the same day, so that was great this year. It is uplifting to listen to the words of the prophet and apostles and really ponder on the marvelous blessings we receive as a result of the atonement and resurrection. It makes for a wonderful experience. So it was a good weekend, a great holiday, not much in the ways of news to report, but fabulous just the same.

I Prom-ise It Will Be Fun!

Yesterday was prom at the high school. After being asked to Winter Ball and having a great time, Daniel decided he wanted to go to prom. He asked the same cute girl that took him to Winter Ball (they have been in band together for years so they know each other well and get along well). She made him do some very serious math to decode her response.

Unlike the evening only event that prom was in my day, they had the day date and then the evening date. They started of the day date by having a giant Nerf gun war. How fun is that?

They ate lunch and then shuttled everyone home so they could get pretty for the main event. Once they were all gussied up, they took pictures (in the snow!), ate a fabulous steak dinner at one of the participant’s house, and headed off to the dance. The after-dance activity was watching La La Land and having dessert. The kids was seriously gone all day! But as I’ve said before, these are the memory makers.

My Very Favorite Malia-esque Scripture

“The bourbon of baby lion…” (2 Nephi 23:1 “The burden of Babylon…)

There was laughter, so much laughter. Scripture time is often jovial around here...

Una serata di lacrime e risate

Last night was opera night. We ended up with an extra ticket so both Daniel and Nathan were going to go with me, but unexpectedly, Matthew expressed an interest. Daniel was great and offered to let Matthew go instead. I figured it would be a good first opera because they performed two one act operas (Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi), one a tragedy and one a comedy. It would let him experience a bit of variety and would be shorter than many other operas in case he got bored with the whole thing. Somewhat to my surprise, he really enjoyed it. I guess that means I have one more kid that is ready to be placed in the opera rotation.

Girls' Night Out

One of Malia’s experience gifts this past Christmas was another trip to see Disney On Ice. As expected, she was super excited, probably even more excited than last year since she knew what to expect this time. She really enjoyed the show and honestly, I think this year’s story was better than last year. Last year they spent over an hour just retelling Toy Story 3. This year they had many 5-10 minutes stories that included all the Disney princesses, Toy Story, Finding Dory, Inside Out, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, etc. I had forgotten where our seats were and was pretty excited when we arrived and I remembered that I received a rockin’ email coupon code and as a result we had great seats. When the show was over, I asked Malia about her favorite part. She said it was the whole thing. It’s always fun for me to see how excited my kiddos get when they get to experience something super cool so seeing Malia’s enthusiasm was probably the highlight for me!

Rock It!

At the end of January, Daniel and his jazz band took first place in the high school battle of the bands. Today they participated in the regional competition and took second place. From here they go on to the state competition next month and they were featured in a local newspaper article. It is kind of fun to see him in print!

I’m Not Lion, It Was a Great Day!

Matthew, Malia and I went on an off-track adventure this morning. We haven’t been to the zoo for awhile and two new polar bears have recently moved to the zoo so we went to see them. We arrived just as the zoo was opening and for the first hour, the only people we saw were zoo keepers. Honestly, it felt like we had the whole zoo to ourselves. It was also breakfast time for the animals so we got to see them noshing on their varied breakfast eats. Even the lions, who are normally just lounging out in the sun, were enthusiastically partaking. They had settled in right next to the glass so we got an up close and personal view of them. It was pretty cold when we arrived, but as we’ve discovered in the past, the animals seem to be more active when it is cooler and pretty much all of them were eating, playing or roaming their habitats. It was a great day to be at the zoo!

Woot! Woot!

Today we received Notification that Matthew has qualified for the State Geography Bee! I’m so proud of him!