easter 2012

Easter morning I got the kids ready for church and let them find their baskets before we left. Addison knew they were hidden somewhere in the house. So cute watching them going around to look for them.

Kaden was obviously excited about his 'find.'

Payton was a bit jealous...check out her face. :) So...we were on a hunt to find hers.

She found it alright and immediately went to work checkin' out the goodies.

Then Addison went on the hunt for hers and scouted it out pretty fast.

I pretty much just love spoiling them and buying them things. :) I think it is more fun for me than it is them. :)


After the basket hunting and church, we headed to Mom and Dad's for the day. It was a beautiful day...warm and 'sunshiny.'

A pic of some sisters...Dan and Nat.

Here we are gearing up for another egg hunt...all on the front porch!

Dan and me!

Uncle Stephen TOOK OFF with Kaden to fill his bag with eggs. What a sweet guy to help him out. Kaden just adores him...and they have so many of the same mannerisms.

Ashley walked around with little Pay-Pay.

Addison was quite the champ filling her bag on her own. ;)

sweet :)

One of the really hard ones to find for Pay Pay. Ha!

Showing Daddy their goodies!

She was so proud.

Good job Kaden!

My wonderful Aunt Tracy brought THIS for prizes for the kids. She wins everything...and I'm really not kidding. She is one of the luckiest people! She bought a raffle to win this a few weeks before Easter and, of course, she won! It was so fun for the kiddos.

Mom was helping pass out all the items and helped decide who got what.

Since this was just Pay-Pay's 'size' this is what she got to bring home. I'm pretty sure she was happy about it.

And thought it was comfy too!

And...once the wagon was empty,....

they got a little ride.

Nat and Ash and a friend, Becca.

Some corn hole action for the day.

Dylan and Austin

Volley Ball time for some.

And....to top it off, we had a big fire as the sun went down. Kaden and Trenton helped gather some sticks.

Kaden just loved throwing them into the fire.

Stephen helped with the big logs.


It was a great day. We left for home with some sleepy kiddos. Thankful for a day to celebrate our Risen King with family and friends. :)

easter egg hunting

On Saturday, before Easter, Chelsey had said she wanted to go with me and take the kiddos to do some egg hunting. Thank God for her because there is no way I would ever attempt to take all 3 three of them to something like that by myself. I don't let much stop me or get in my way with them, but that just sounded a little bit much. Poor Keith doesn't get 'weekends' to have fun and do things all the time. Unfortunately, holidays mean absolutely nothing in our family. We celebrate them, but often not on the day they truly are. And...we just make the best of it. :)

It was a bit chilly Saturday morning when Chels came to the house to meet us, but we bundled up and headed out to a small hunt that our friend Susie told us about for their church. It was really just perfect for us...not huge, but TONS of eggs filled with lots of great, kid-friendly candy. What more could you want? ;) 

They split Kaden and Payton's group from the group that Adders was in. My Dad came and brought Allie and Kyllie too so he kind of stayed with them. I took K-dog, and Susie and Chels helped with Pay-Pay. There wasn't really much to do...they caught on pretty quickly. :)

 The funny thing was...the whole time he was finding these eggs, he had no idea there was anything inside of them. He (and Payton) just thought it was cool to pick up these brightly colored things from the grass and bushes and put them in their bucket!

 

 Lookin' so darn cute.

 Pay-Pay did so good and had a filled bucket by the end.

 Add fell in love with this little dog that belonged to the owners of the farm/house/land we went to. This pic makes it look kind of big, but this was seriously one of the smallest little things I have ever seen.

 Some of the goodness inside of Addison's bucket...and notice the egg in the top left! She found the golden egg! yay!

 Here she is wearing her sticker and waiting for her prize.

This was about the time that Kaden noticed that there was 'candy' inside those beautiful eggs. He then shared that with his little sister. In the little bit of time we stayed there afterwards, they consumed A LOT of candy. A LOT. My Dad kept laughing at how fast they were shoving it in their mouths. And...I just let them do it. :) I didn't stop them at all. There are not many times that I do that, but this was definitely a good exception. They had such a fun time and I'm glad that we went. We had buckets of candy to snack on for many days.

keith's birthday

We have been in the quite the busy season of life recently which has limited what we have been able to do a lot here recently. BUT...birthdays are special and important to me, and I like to make people feel special. :) And...often times it is really just the little things that do that for people. So...I made sure to take some time to make my awesome husband feel that way. He bought me box of my fav cereal for my birthday.

 So...I had this waiting when he came downstairs that afternoon when he woke up...his fav.

 And...I was still working on this. :) We both just love peanut butter and chocolate, so I went on a search looking for a good recipe. I found something magnificent. It didn't just look good, but smelled and tasted good too. And...took a long time to make! Whew! But all worth it!

This was my helper in the kitchen that 'helped' by licking the bowl of chocolate goodness.

Happy Birthday to my Honey! So glad I am walking this journey with you.