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.

Spring Breaks our Backs

Every Spring Break I try to plan a few fun activities for our kids to go and do.  We don't usually travel during this week, but we will go on hikes, visit a museum, or go to the beach, just to get out of the house.  Some of my children have not been appreciative of these outings, claiming that they are not very much fun.  They would prefer to just stay at home.  Well, this week, we did just that.  We stayed at home and worked on a massive home improvement project.  We painted the family room a sage green color and my bedroom a cream color (yeah, the yellow is gone!), and moved all of the furniture out of two bedrooms and the family.  The furniture was moved to prepare for new carpet!  Maddie and Patrick were instrumental in assisting with the painting, and Jayd provided needed muscle for moving around the large furniture.  Until the carpet is completed (it should be done on Monday), we are living a little cramped in the rooms of the house, but we are finding ways to survive.  I asked the kids if they preferred just staying at home for the week.  Their answer,  "It was kind of boring, there wasn't a lot to do."  Jayd finally couldn't stand life without the TV, he brought one back in the house!

Ethan's Blessing

Last weekend, we attended the blessing of my newest nephew, Ethan.  I love Ethan, he cracks me up.  Since was born at nearly 10 lbs, he reminded me (size wise) of my own whopping big babies!  Ethan has not slowed down on his growth since birth at all.  His face looks like a newborn, and his movements and actions betray that he is a newborn, but the size is deceptive.  Every time I hold him or look at him, I am reminded of my Gabe, my really big baby!
We really enjoyed spending the day with my sister's family.  They have now left the state.  They have moved back to Colorado, so our visits with them will be limited from here on.  I have really enjoyed having a sister live close to me.  I will really miss them.

And the Verdict Is......Guilty

She was guilty of participating in the Mock Trial competition.  For the past school year, Maddie's afternoon's have been consumed by Mock Trial.  You may not know what Mock Trial is, I didn't.  Even after she came home late from school for a month, I didn't know what it was.  When she came home excited that she had been upgraded from witness to a prosecutor lawyer, I was excited for her, but I still didn't know what it was.  She was worried about it, she fretted about it, she studied for it, and she worked at it.  I still didn't really know what it was!  Finally it was time for the competition.  As I do with most of my children's activities, I attended the competition, even though I still didn't really know what it was!  After the competition, I finally knew what it was.  I had been cheering Maddie on all along, but after I finally understood what it was, I was very impressed.
For Mock Trial, the team is given a case.  They have a defendant, witnesses, and experts.  Then they present their case, the defense and prosecution to a real judge at the real county courthouse.  Each school has a prosecution and a defense.  One school runs the prosecution and another runs the defense.  They are timed so the trial doesn't go on forever.  They are allowed to object, and must defend their objections.  It was very interesting.  It was much more difficult than I anticipated as the lawyers tried to find different ways to ask the same question in a different manner, or tried to calmly explain or defend their objection.  The witnesses tried to answer the questions that placed their side of the case in a pleasant light.  It was very entertaining.  I had not thought that much about it.  It was much different from the traditional sports competition, but no less entertaining.  I enjoyed seeing the teenagers striving to improve themselves and learn to act in a professional manner.  I am grateful that Maddie was in the Mock Trial competition, and I thought that she did great!!!

A comedy of errors

And one thing just led to another until we arrived at this!

 So last week we ran into a comedy of errors.  On Sunday, I filled up the trunk with my scrapbook stuff to return home from my annual week at the Balboa house.  It was quite tightly packed, but it all fit nicely in the trunk.  On Monday, I did not unload it because I wanted to leave the stuff in the garage for a few days, but wasn't sure where to put it.  Monday afternoon, I put the checkbook for the volleyball boosters in the backseat. About 20 minutes later, I tried to get the checkbook.  It wasn't where I put it, so I started to look around.  There was too much junk in the car, so I grabbed a grocery bag and stuffed it in the trunk.  I searched the car, but could not find the checkbook.  So then I thought there might have been a small possibility that it fell in the bag that I put in the trunk.  But when I tried to open the trunk, it wouldn't open!  It was stuck.  We couldn't get through the pass through from the backseat to open it because it was too full of stuff to move anything.  There wasn't anything else we could do, so we started pulling off bolts and took the entire backseat out of the car.  It worked I was able to remove all of my scrapbook things from the trunk, and found the bag.  I was right, the checkbook had fallen in the bag.  I was greatly relieved to have found it.  But Jeff was unable to fix the trunk for 2 days, so anytime I took the kids somewhere, they had to ride in a modified back seat!  We decided it was legal because there were still seatbelts, although I can't imagine it was comfortable!