Easter Rises Again

Another year, another Easter.  This one was a little bittersweet, since we know that next year we will only have 3 children at home for the traditional easter egg hunt.  Gabe was enthusiatic to join in the ranks of Easter Bunny Helpers.  He was particularly interested in helping this year, since Maddie and Jayd have been helpers for him for years.  He wanted this last opportunity to assist so that his older siblings could be allowed the pleasure of the true hunt.  Even Toby joined the fun.

Sea World

Allie's Girl Scout troop has been trying to go to Seaworld for years.  This doesn't sound too difficult, but they wanted the girl scout sea world experience.  They wanted to spend the night there.  Sea World has packages for girl scouts where you can spend the night at the park in one of their animal habitats.  Allie's group was able to secure a night with the penguins.  Allie and her troop took the train down to Sea World on Friday morning.  They were admitted to the park and saw a few things, including feeding the manta rays, before settling in for the night.  They slept in the penguin habitat.  Allie said it was a little chilly, but I don't think that she minded.  She loves penguins and wore her penguin pajamas to prove it.  The next day, they had breakfast with Shamu.  Then they spent the day at the park before boarding the train to return home.  It was a wonderful experience, and I am very grateful to her leaders for making all of the arrangements.  It is very difficult to secure a reservation for these experiences, and they had the added difficulty of getting one on a Friday night so that Allie would be able to attend.  I am very grateful for their respectfulness towards our preferences.  Allie really enjoyed going with her troop.

Sweet and Savory Conference

Today is General Conference Sunday.  We love the semi-annual occurrence at our house.  We are able to sit in our home and listen to our prophets and apostles speak to us about the things we need to be doing.  Every year we make a conference pool, we try to guess which apostles will speak during which sessions.  We cheer when we get one right!  We take notes and enjoy being together.  But the very best part is conference cake.  Between the morning and afternoon session, we have a great brunch, filled with foods that we do not normally have in our house.  The star of the show is the conference cake.  It is basically a coffee cake that has been renamed and repurposed.  It is delicious and we love it.  A close runner up is bacon.  Since I do not enjoy really anything about bacon, I do not like to touch it, cook it, or even eat it, it rarely makes an appearance in my house.  So the Conference Sunday bacon is a very anticipated event.  We throw in a great batch of scrambled eggs and some orange juice to make our meal special.  We look forward to this meal every year where we can enjoy good food and talk about what we need to do to stay on the right path back to our Father in Heaven.