Resurrection Sunday!

We were blessed with an amazing Easter Sunday this year. The weather was absolutely perfect, which was an unexpected treat. We had a lovely service at church in the morning, followed by a family dinner and egg hunt in the afternoon. The food was fantastic, even the adults enjoyed the egg hunt, visiting with the extended family is always nice, and a good time was had by all.

My boys and I before service began at Church.

The sanctuary was beginning to fill up for Resurrection Sunday service. It was a pretty full house by the time the service began. It was a wonderful worship service, and Pastor Rusty always shares a powerful message.

Ella was ready to get to the egg hunt!


Egg hunting mayhem! The grown ups hid the eggs all over the place- some were tossed in the open lawn, and others were more elaborately hidden. Each of the children had their own assigned egg color, and there was one "wild" color that anyone could grab. This worked out to be the best idea ever, and ensured that all the kids had a good selection of eggs to find. We will definitely have to use the same methods next year. There was also an impromptu sword fight in the middle of the egg hunt. What is an Easter celebration without a sword fight? The egg hunt and sword fight were followed by a squirt gun fight, on account of the weather being so wonderful.

Ella was walking on the slide in an effort to reach a purple egg, and she slipped just as I snapped the picture. It's amazing that it didn't come out blurry, as it happened so fast!

All in all, I think everyone had a great time!

Almost spring... maybe?

The snow has finally melted. There have actually been a couple days that it has been gorgeous outside, and I could even open my house windows for a wee bit (although it still required that I wore a hoodie to be really comfortable). Who would have thought I'd be so ecstatic to hit 50 degrees?? Eight months ago, I would have felt like I was freezing when the temperatures dipped that low. After this frigid winter, I'm busting out the flip flops already at any chance I can get!

I love that I've been able to open the sunroof a couple days already. I'll admit that I'm guilty of opening it AND running the seat warmers at the same time to compensate, just because I was excited about the sunshine :) True to midwest fashion, we are given a gorgeous day one day, and thrust back into the frozen tundra the next. I just keep reminding myself that the winter weather can't go on forever. I mean, it can't... can it??

Weather aside, things are going great. I passed all my classes this past quarter. I'm halfway through my two week spring break, and I'm loving the time to just relax. My next quarter, the only class I have will be Nursing Fundamentals. It will be a lecture/lab as well as clinicals, but that will be the only class. Others that I go to school with are required to take additional classes as well. That makes me thankful I had worked on all those pre-req's previously!

We have one more competition this weekend, and then our cheer season is over. We have the big cheer banquet coming up in May, which she's looking forward to. It will give her a chance to wear a pageant dress again. She'll still have tumbling and cheer classes until the next season starts, so it won't be too different schedule-wise, except that we won't have to travel anywhere for a while. She will find out tomorrow what team she is going to be on next season. I'm praying she's happy with the decision. I know she's really stressed over it. It's too bad that the girls that are on our team this year won't all be together next year due to their ages and some being moved to a higher aged division and some down to mini division. I'm sure they'll stay in touch though- they've made some strong friendships!!

Overall, life is good. God is so good. Even the tragedy of my "old reliable" mini-van blowing up mid-competition weekend turned out to be a good thing in the end. I guess it's all about perspective. It's certainly not always easy to see the blessings in disguise at the time, but I have to remind myself that God is faithful and He always has a plan. I can't wait to see what the rest of the plan is!