Easter Sunday!

The big three woke up Sunday morning to a yard full of treats from the Easter Grandpa.  :)

I asked them to stand over there so I could take a picture, and they all three faced away from me.  Ha!

There was chocolate on Daddy’s car!

Having a conversation:

They were always putting things in each other’s baskets – such sweet sharers.

James’ little giraffe basket filled up pretty fast, and he had to switch over to his bunny bag that he made at school. :)

Back inside, I let the kiddos eat half of their chocolate egg and the Peep inside… before breakfast!  Best mom ever.

I’m pretty sure they’ve never had so much chocolate in one sitting before.

The babies slept through all of that fun.  I wouldn’t have let them eat chocolate for breakfast anyway.

We got all dressed up and stopped by Gran and Grandpa David’s house for some roses.

We arrived after the 9:40 service had started, so Matt dropped me and the big kids off while he found a parking spot.

Pretty roses from Gran’s bushes!

James wanted the biggest rose.

I delivered the children to their Sunday school classes and then watched them come to the flower cross.

Joanna:

James:

Natalie:

She’s got some great expressions.  :)

Even though they came at three different times, they all put their roses very close to each other.

We dropped off the babies in the nursery at some point so they could hopefully have a little nap, and we took the bigs to worship in the Sanctuary at 11:00.

Natalie was throwing a bit of a fit about something and didn’t want to go up for the children’s sermon.  Rev. Judy saw her and beckoned Natalie to sit with her.  Natalie was pretty happy about that, and it cured whatever she was mad about.

You can see James listening to Rev. Ellen:

Rev. Ellen passed out some eggs with critters (that come from eggs) in them, talking about new life and birth and how eggs relate to what we celebrate at Easter.  Joanna is opening her egg with a lizard in it here:

And then we may have snuck out of the service because the best time for taking pictures in front of the flower cross is while everybody’s in church.  :)

This next one is my favorite of the kids as far as composition and lighting and bokeh and who knows what else. But James and Natalie’s faces aren’t the best.

So I took eight million and am posting several here because when you have many children, they all look best in different pictures.  And I like all of these for different reasons.  I may have to see if I can figure out how to swap out a head or two here and there.  :)

And then the kiddos really started to look sweet and at the camera, but PEOPLE began walking in the background.  (Only kidding of course!)

Then I had Matt take some of me with the kiddos.  I’m going to pretend he was trying to be artistic with the crooked photo here, instead of just not paying attention.  Ha!

I look so sweet above with my brood, but I’m sure this is how my face usually is:

I can’t even remember why I was making it.  :) But the boys look super cute!

It was a beautiful Sunday to celebrate our risen Savior!  And it sure felt nice not to have any responsibilities in the service, to just be able to worship with my family.  Then we had a super low key afternoon, much of it spent enjoying the lovely day in the backyard.  Happy Easter friends!

Quick recap of the past week

I cleared out my “to blog” folder a couple of days ago and felt so accomplished and caught-up. :)  I neglected to check my camera for recent pics though.  Here are some from Palm Sunday!

We arrived too late for Sunday school and too early for worship, so there was time for some palm waving!

Even the babies got in on the action.  Thomas:

Michael:

All five!

Uuummmmm… super precious, or what?!!

At 11:00, both Natalie and Joanna were singing with the children’s choir, and they processed in waving palms.  James went back to be a part of the action, but ended up in the middle of the choirs instead of at the end.  He snuck up into the choir loft and Theresa had to herd him back down to us – ha!

Natalie:

Her little cherub choir sang first.  I could hear her sweet voice from where I was sitting.  :)

Prayer time:

You can see Joanna’s tiny head in the very middle of the next pic.  I might need a zoom lens.  :)

We slipped out of the sanctuary service after Joanna sang and sat in the back of the Vine service to hear Chris preach.  I Instagrammed this shot:

Natalie handed this to me at home so I took a picture.

That evening we were invited to Matt’s sister’s house.  Her son set up a crawfish boil!!

Now I haven’t mentioned this publicly, but I’ve been craving crawfish for just over a year.  HAPPY DAY!!

I thankfully had a sling in the car so I was able to wear Michael and be hand’s free.  It didn’t occur to me to pack additional baby wearing devices (that one’s in there for emergencies) so Matt could do the same with Thomas.

So Matt didn’t get to eat a ton of crawfish while we were there due to the baby holding, but we were sent home with a doggie bag, so it’s ALL GOOD!

On Monday night we had leftovers for dinner, so I used my dinner prep time to make a huge batch of The Pioneer Woman’s spaghetti sauce.  It took longer and made a bigger mess than I had intended.  BUT that’s NINE meals ready to go!  {On a side note, I really need to invest in a larger stock pot.  I think my biggest is 6 quarts, and that’s just not always cutting it these days.  I say that every time I make a big batch of sauce or soup or chili though.}

We managed a {mostly} group picture at Musikgarten class on Tuesday.

A very sweet friend passed along her double jogging stroller to us, and it’s AWESOME!  It’s rides so nicely!!  Matt put the boys in it for a little tooling around cul-du-sac on Saturday.  Michael liked it so much he even fell asleep in it.  :)